Gravity (5 page)

It wasn't just that I'd grown up.

She'd changed.

And looking back it was easy to pinpoint the moment when her well of happiness had dried up.

Mum looked at her watch. I remembered the watch. Its scratched silver band and blue face were more familiar than the woman who wore it.

‘What are you doing for dinner?' Mum asked.

‘I don't know.'

She vanished into her bedroom and closed the door. She emerged five minutes later in cream pants and a red T-shirt with flowers embroidered on the front. Her ponytail had
gone. Her hair curled against her neck with a brushed kink where her elastic had been.

‘You're going out?' I asked.

‘There's nothing in the fridge. If you want to eat, then we'll have to go out.'

‘Is it walking distance?'

She picked up her red purse and took her navy coat from the peg beside the door.

‘Two minutes.'

We walked in silence. Me with my hands in my jean pockets, Mum with her arms swinging purposefully. The silence wasn't as comfortable as old boots but it felt okay. There was a certainty to her stride. She knew where she was going and I was happy to tag along.

The street was spotted with restaurants. Mum caught me marvelling at the shrivelled carcases of ducks hanging in the front window at one joint.

‘I know a place,' she said.

Bow Thai. It didn't have ducks in the window and the waiter who seated us looked like a pro surfer – all tanned with unruly hair and shell necklaces. There were two couples at one table near the centre of the room and an Asian family with three kids wedged into a booth near the door to the toilets. It smelled like deep-frying oil and rang with a dickless panpipe rendition of ‘Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head'.

Johnno, the waiter, knew Mum by name and took our drink order without a word and without writing anything down. I needed a beer and Mum said she'd have her usual. My stubby of VB came with a frosted glass hat and Johnno
managed to pour me a three-inch head. Mum's looked like a lemon squash. He asked if we were ready to order.

‘I'll have the usual,' Mum said, and Johnno smiled.

I went all out. Chilli fried squid. Not much squid around at the Splitters Creek Hotel and I liked those new chilli and sour cream chips, so I thought I'd give it a go. Something different.

Mum offered a toast. She was holding her glass in the air for three seconds before I realised. We chinked glasses but said nothing. She chugged half her drink and placed it on the table with a satisfied sigh.

‘That hardly touched the sides,' I said.

‘Good old lemon squash.'

I chuckled, mostly to myself. Parts of Mum really hadn't changed. In the olden days, when Dad would have a beer, Mum would have lemon squash. And when Dad hoed into his rump steak – well done – Mum would have . . .

I couldn't restrain myself when Johnno delivered our meals and Mum's ‘usual' hadn't changed either.

Chicken and chips. From the kids' menu.

‘What are you laughing at?' she asked.

I shook my head. ‘We're in this food capital of the world, in a Thai restaurant with a hundred choices on the menu, and look what you get.'

Mum shrugged. ‘I know what I like.'

‘But you've never tried anything else.'

‘So?' she said.

She picked up her knife and fork and sliced a chip. She put her cutlery down again and signalled to Johnno.

‘Sauce?' Mum asked.

Johnno folded his fingers together, apologised and left. He returned with a small porcelain bowl filled with tomato sauce. Mum spooned some onto her plate.

‘That looks interesting,' she said.

It was more than interesting. Each mouthful was salty fiery bliss. I'd broken out in a sweat and had to order another VB halfway through. I loved it. I mopped my brow with a paper napkin. My nose ran. I felt like a man of the world.

Mum arranged her cutlery over her chicken bones when she was done. She smacked her lips, wiped her fingers on her napkin and stared at me.

‘What?' I asked.

Her mouth twitched, like she was about to speak. No words formed. She looked away.

‘What are you doing here?' she eventually said.

‘Pardon?' She looked at my eyes again. ‘I don't know,' I said. ‘I could ask you the same question.'

‘I'm having a rest.'

‘A rest from what?'

Mum didn't say. She didn't need to.

‘You're running from something,' she said.

‘No I'm not,' I said. ‘What are
you
running from?'

Again, Mum didn't feel the question was worth answering.

‘When are you going back?' she asked.

‘I don't know. I don't know if I am going back. At all. Why? When are you going back?'

Mum sniffed and flicked her hair. ‘Who's looking after your brother?'

‘Dad. Who else?'

‘Good.'

With that, the conversation ground to a halt. Mum's lips wrinkled as though somebody had pulled drawstrings in her cheeks. She looked at Johnno, but she wasn't really looking. Her eyes were all fire on the inside.

My pulse sprinted. I wasn't good at this. I wasn't good at conflict. We hadn't had much practice. Mum had always kept the peace and I'd grown up respecting that. Now we were as close to fighting as we'd ever been. Verbal push and shove and the things we were fighting about were sepulchral. Formless mists. The ghost of my brother who wasn't actually dead.

It was pointless.

‘I stacked the ute. Not much damage, but I couldn't drive it. Coming back from Catalpa after the footy. It was late – I don't know, three o'clock or something and there was this . . .'

‘Had you been drinking?'

Mum stiffened. Her drawstrung mouth quivered. She knew the answer but she wanted to hear me say it. Confess. Wrap words around my stupidity. Own it.

The fire in her eyes was fanned by my wordless stare. My frozen moment. My thoughts blurred until I was suddenly aware of her breathing – stuttering and shallow like a dying animal.

‘Had you?' she snarled.

‘Yes.'

She exploded from her seat and I flinched. All whipping hair and exposed teeth. She toppled her chair as she grabbed her coat and purse but didn't stop to right it.

She banged through the door and into the night.

I righted her seat and paid Johnno. He mumbled his thanks and I left, expecting she'd be outside the door, but she'd gone.

As I walked, I thought about driving home but just the thought required more energy than I had at my disposal. It was like I'd lost a grand final by one point. Exhausted, as if my body had been punished, with my heavy heart threatening to spill on the footpath at my feet.

I sat in the driver's seat of the Suba and held the wheel. I stared at a fluorescent security light on the balcony near Mum's flat. It flickered and I felt like climbing the stairs and punching the thing. Knock some sense into it. I folded the seat down in the back of Bully's Subaru, revealing a condom wrapper but no condom. I unpacked my swag and climbed in fully clothed, with all the doors locked around me but the window open a crack.

On or off. Make your choice. Don't just flicker.

I hardly slept. My body desperately needed to, but it creaked and complained about the makeshift bed and I couldn't stop the rack of useless blah-blah thoughts tumbling around in my head. There was the noise, too. The ceaseless rumble of the city, punched every half-hour or so by the pinging of a nearby level crossing and trains that sounded like they were clacking over the top of the car. I lost count of how many times the howl and clatter of the railway dragged me out of feather-light sleep, my fingers gripping the swag. Skin tingling.

I cried out just before dawn. The ute I was driving in my dream left the road. I'd fallen asleep at the wheel and the racket of a train exploded into my consciousness as I crashed.

It was light by then. Watery winter dawn. The insides of the windows had fogged and I realised, after the train noise had subsided and I could breathe again, that somebody was tapping on the glass.

‘Adam?'

‘Mum?'

I rubbed at my eyes and wound down the window.

Her uniform and ponytail were back. She tossed keys onto the sleeping bag in front of me.

‘Help yourself to breakfast. The shower's useless but better than nothing. The towels are in a cupboard in the kitchen.'

I curled my fingers around the keys. They were still warm.

‘Thanks,' I said, but she'd gone, her sensible shoes tick-tacking on the concrete.

Breakfast was a choice of cornflakes with skim milk or cornflakes without skim milk. No bacon. No eggs. No bread for toast. I had a shower instead.

The water pressure seemed okay but the shower rose was pissy and even though I was conscious of not being able to run the tank dry, in three minutes I'd cleaned myself and turned the water off. My boxers smelled a bit nasty but I put them back on.

With the flat empty and a ticking curiosity, I opened the door to Mum's room. She'd made her bed. It was a double and I wondered if anyone had shared it with her. I flopped face-first into the covered pillow. It smelled like dust and washing powder. The same washing powder Mum had always used.

I didn't mean to fall asleep. I woke at midday, my cheek resting in a cold pool of dribble on Mum's bedspread. I wiped at my face and at the wet spot on the cover. My guts grumbled.

I ate brunch at the golden arches. It was getting to be a habit, but hey, I knew what I liked. I bought a jacket, two new
shirts and two new pairs of jeans at Ski, Surf and Sun. Four hundred and eighty-nine dollars. I swallowed hard and handed the saleswoman the cash. I bought socks and jocks and boxers at Target. Deodorant, shavers, a toothbrush and stuff to make dinner at Coles. My day kicked into top gear at about three in the afternoon when I decided to replace Mum's shower rose.

The Hardware House stank of fresh paint. I cruised the aisles looking for a shower rose but instead found the source of the paint smell. Three customers stood at the edge of a small lake of liquid white, watching a woman struggle with huge cans that had toppled from a pallet. Several cans had popped their lids and the lake was about three metres wide. I couldn't believe the customers were just watching. I stepped carefully on the spilled paint and grabbed a fallen can. I stood it on the pallet and the woman noticed me.

‘Oh, you don't have to. Please . . . Look at your boots! My god, they're covered! Thanks, but you . . .'

I shrugged and righted another can. And another. The customers went back to their shopping. Soon, a bloke in a Hardware House store uniform arrived on the edge of the mess with a bag of rags.

‘Have you got any sand?' I asked.

‘Sand?' the bloke said.

‘Sand first, rags later.'

‘What sort of sand?' the bloke asked. His voice was lispy and effeminate; his hair gelled into a messy mohawk.

‘Any sort.'

He span on his heels and vanished down an aisle. The woman beside me grunted with effort as she righted each
can. I took the handles from her and lifted them out of the mess and onto the pallet.

‘Thank you,' she said with each can.

‘No worries.'

The male assistant returned with a squeaky trolley carrying three bags of sand. ‘Now what?'

I stepped through the lake of paint again and lifted a bag onto my hip. I flipped my pocketknife out of its sheath and opened the blade with my teeth. I stabbed into the bottom of the bag and opened a hole that let the sand flow. I paced the edge of the liquid mess and let the sand fall. Soon the puddle was shored up and the bag was empty. I gutted another bag and spread the contents around the middle.

‘We'll need a shovel. A big, square-mouthed shovel,' I said to the bloke.

‘Right,' he said, and jogged off.

The woman had retreated to the edge and had her knuckles resting on her hips. She shook her head.

Pansy boy returned with the perfect shovel. It had a D handle and a mouth on it like a backhoe bucket. It still had the price tag on it. I flipped it in my fingers then made it second-hand on the painted sand. The scraping on the concrete echoed around the store as I mixed the sand and piled it.

‘Grab one of those fifty-litre planter pots, Harry,' the woman said.

Harry – the pansy – ducked down another aisle and produced a black plastic pot. He stuffed one of the empty bags in the bottom to cover the holes and I shovelled it full
of white sand. I helped Harry lift the filled pot onto the trolley.

The woman had a smile on her face. She was in her twenties at a guess, with flawless honey skin and dark hazel eyes. She had a smear of paint on her cheek.

‘Don't suppose you're looking for a job,' she said.

‘Well, actually . . .'

‘Don't move,' she said, and took a mobile phone from her belt. She dialled and her voice came over the PA.

‘Tony, can you come to paint, please? Tony to paint.'

I grabbed a rag and wiped at the lip of a can. When it was clean, I wiped the sand and most of the paint off my boots.

‘God, your boots are stuffed,' the woman said. ‘I don't even know your name.'

‘Adam Prince.'

I put out my hand and realised it had a paint spot on it. I rubbed at the spot with the rag and succeeded in spreading it across my palm.

‘Doesn't matter,' the woman said, and stuck out her hand. ‘I'm Debbie Wilde.'

We shook, laughed and looked at our hands.

‘I guess we're blood now,' Debbie said. ‘Or paint, as the case may be.'

An Italian bloke in a suit arrived. ‘What the bloody hell happened here?' he said. He'd said it quietly so that only Debbie and I could hear. He'd said it quietly but the rage in him was palpable.

‘Tony, this is Adam,' Debbie said.

Tony bucked his head in a defiant sort of greeting. ‘Are you responsible for this?' he asked me.

‘Don't be a dick,' Debbie said. ‘It was an accident. Adam helped clean it up.'

‘Oh, right. What did you want?'

‘Adam's looking for a job.'

Tony scoffed. ‘Good luck, Adam.'

Debbie sighed. ‘I don't think you understand, Tony. Adam wants a job and you're going to give him one.'

Tony put a fist on his hip and stroked an invisible beard with his other hand.

Subtle, I thought. Don't mess with Debbie, I thought. Tony may have been the boss, but Debbie had the power. There was something more than the average employee– employer relationship between them.

‘Oh, right,' Tony said. ‘And who am I going to sack so that Mr Adam can have his job?'

‘Nobody,' Debbie said. ‘I've saved you the trouble. I sacked Karen. It was one of her little tantrums that ended up all over the floor here.'

‘You can't do that, Debbie,' Tony hissed. He waved his arms wildly. ‘You can't just sack someone.'

Debbie shrugged. ‘It's done. She'd been warned. It's all there on the security video. I probably saved you ten grand by doing it. And if you want to save another ten grand, give Adam the job.'

So Tony gave me the job. I cleaned myself up and followed him upstairs to his office, signed a form and listened to him rabbit on about pay and conditions. He gave me two official Hardware House shirts and an apron. He said my nametag would be ready in a week. It happened just like that.

The paint smell had mostly gone when I came back to the shop later with a bunch of yellow roses for Debbie. All that was left of the spill was a pale clean patch on the concrete floor.

‘Thanks,' I said, and handed her the flowers.

She blushed. Her face literally flooded with blood.

‘They're beautiful, Adam. You didn't have to. God, I should be buying
you
flowers.'

‘They're the least I can do. I only arrived in town a couple of days ago and you got me a job. I feel like I owe you big-time.'

There was an awkward moment when Debbie rolled on the balls of her feet and sniffed at the roses. She fell onto her heels, straightened her apron and coughed into her hand.

‘I guess I'll see you tomorrow,' I said.

‘Yes. Excellent. See you then.'

We said goodbye and I could feel her watching me as I strode along the aisle. I stole a glance. She looked away. She'd definitely been watching me. She had definitely blushed. I had a job and my heart was fit to burst.

Harry was serving a customer in the timber yard. I gently patted his shoulder as I stepped past.

‘See you tomorrow, Harry.'

‘Right. Okay. See you tomorrow . . . mate,' Harry said.

Mum missed my culinary coming of age. It was her leaving Splitters Creek that spurred me to cook. Tori – so graceful and competent in the kitchen – taught me how to make a pasta sauce from scratch and stir fry and curried vegetables and rice. She was patient and explained everything with a natural flair.

Simon wouldn't eat some of the things I made. I kept three bags of frozen chips in the chest freezer to keep the peace. We were fine as long as we didn't run out of sauce. I kept two big caterer's bottles in the pantry. Dad called my creations hippie food, but not unkindly. He'd say grace and eat without a word but never failed to make a positive comment when he'd finished, even when it turned out nothing like the stuff Tori made. He'd obviously worked out that his heavy-hearted indifference had cost him his wife. It would have been a less painful experience if he'd noticed that Mum was falling apart a day a week a month a year
before
she left.

It would have helped if I'd pitched in, too.

It got dark in the flat and I cooked. Nothing special, just my take on a pasta sauce. Tomato, onion, zucchini and mushroom. I was cooking for Mum for the first time in my life. I was giving her back a meal for all the meals she'd made for me. I'd only have to do it for eighteen more years to repay the debt.

The door rattled. My stomach dropped like I'd missed a step. I hurried across to let her in and the timer on the electric oven pinged – the garlic bread was ready – and Mum was home.

She dropped her purse on the table and didn't move for the longest time. I took the bread from the oven. When I eventually looked directly at her, she flashed her teeth in a token smile.

‘Smells good,' she said and disappeared into her room. When she came back, she was still in her work uniform but her hair was free from the ponytail.

‘I made some dinner. You hungry?'

She offered the barest shrug and sat at the kitchen table. She fingered the TV remote and found the news. She thanked me without enthusiasm and ate in silence, with an eye on the news. She didn't pick at the fettuccine, though – she shovelled.

She said yes to a second helping and washed it all down with lemon squash from the fridge. The news broke for adverts. She took my empty bowl and stacked it in hers.

‘Very nice,' she said, almost under her breath.

‘Thanks. Glad you liked it.'

‘What brand was that?'

‘Pardon?'

‘What brand of pasta sauce?'

‘No brand. Adam Prince brand. Made it up.'

She raised one eyebrow. ‘When did you learn to cook?'

I smiled, but said nothing.

Mum nodded slowly. ‘I'm impressed.'

She filled the sink. I found a threadbare tea towel and stood beside her.

‘What did you get up to today?' she asked.

‘Nothing much. Bit of shopping. Found a job. That sort of thing.'

Mum chuckled. ‘You what?'

‘Found a job. It was an accident. I went to the hardware store down the road looking for a better showerhead and I helped them clean up some paint. They offered me a job.'

Mum stared at the dishwater and shook her head. ‘Did you fix the shower?'

‘No, well, I got distracted.'

Mum let out a stuttery breath. ‘Do you want a cuppa, love?'

I nodded. She called me love and suddenly I was six years old again. Six years old and the Mum from my dreams was back.

‘We missed you,' I said, as Mum filled the white plastic kettle.

She huffed.