Happy as Larry (21 page)

‘The last photo she sent was of her little boy,' Vince said. It was almost a whisper. ‘I have a grandson somewhere in the world. A grandson I've never met who will be twenty this year.'

The conversation stalled. Pieces of the puzzle came together and more mysteries were solved in Larry's head. It went part way to explaining Muriel's anger at the whole world. It gave Larry the sense that all the love and care the old man showered him with was meant for somebody else. Even Vince's tears made a strange sort of sense in the light of his secrets.

But some things got harder to understand.

‘How can two women have a baby together? Doesn't it have to be . . . ?' Larry asked.

‘I don't know,' Vince said. ‘I really don't know.'

FIRE POKER

B
Y MAY OF 2004
, Denise had walked and worked and burned her way into a new body. She wore make-up, ate salad and found it hard to sit still. Vince spotted her over the back fence one Saturday afternoon.

‘Hello, stranger,' he called.

‘Hello, Vince,' she said to the head poking over the palings.

‘Haven't seen you for ages,' he said. ‘You working?'

‘Yes, at the supermarket.'

Vince nodded slowly. ‘The garden has suffered.'

‘No time,' she said flatly.

The old man nodded some more and the moment turned into a sad metaphor in Denise's head. The garden had been abandoned for a different sort of busyness. So had her neighbour.

But the rhythm of the work and the autonomy it gave her had an addictive quality. She walked and worked and burned through the heady romance of her new job and one day found herself arguing with a customer. She overheard him saying that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison was justified.

‘Excuse me, sir, can you keep your voice down, please?'

‘Hey? Are you talking to me? What did I say?'

‘I found your comments offensive and I'm sure others would, too.'

The man laughed. ‘Offensive? I didn't swear. What are you on about?'

The woman with him pulled at his sleeve. ‘Just ignore her, Matty. Let's go.'

He shook her off. ‘No. I'd like to know what I've done wrong.'

‘Nobody deserves to be abused. Nobody deserves to be denigrated and vilified the way those prisoners have been.'

‘Vilifi ed? Denigrated? Big words for a shelf-stacker. They're not people, they're towel-heads.'

He was baiting her, but she kept her head. ‘Do you have a son?'

‘What's that got to do with it?'

‘Or a daughter?'

‘What if I did?'

‘How would you feel if it was your son or daughter being abused?'

‘You're out of your tree, woman.'

‘What if it was Iraqi soldiers handing out the abuse to your son or daughter?'

‘I'd shoot the mongrels. Right in the head. Right between their hairy eyebrows.'

‘I bet there are quite a few Iraqis feeling the same way about those American soldiers at the moment.'

‘Well . . .' the man said. He read her name tag. ‘Well, Denise, thank you for sharing your misguided opinions.

I'll be letting your employer know that I'll tell all my friends . . . and I mean
all
of them . . . not to shop here any more.'

No great loss, Denise thought, but she said, ‘I'm sorry you feel that way.'

‘Yes, you'll be sorry, all right.'

The woman grabbed him by the elbow again and led him down the aisle.

‘Oh,' he said, just as he was about to disappear behind the shelves. ‘I'm not stupid enough to have kids, anyway.'

‘Well,' Denise called, and held her breath. She almost let the thoughts out of her mouth, but closed her lips. They flapped indignantly against her teeth; then her mouth flew open and they were free. ‘Well, sir, we can thank the Lord for small mercies.'

The man's running shoes squeaked on the polished floor as he stopped. ‘What did you say?'

In manager David Crisp's office, the room above the entry to the store with the window of one-way glass, heads were shaking. Anita's head and David's head. There was no air in there. Denise's heart was racing.

‘You just can't say those things to customers,' David said. ‘I understand that his opinions may have offended you, and they offend me, but the customer is always right. It's as simple as that.'

‘Even when he's so obviously wrong?'

‘Even then. Especially then.'

Her heart drummed, but she knew she was right with every gram of her being. ‘Even when he says something awful . . .'

‘Even when he says something awful. He's entitled to his opinion.'

‘Even if he says something awful like, “Don't buy the bread, everyone! There's broken glass in the bread!” '

David looked at his desk. ‘Well, that's different. That's slanderous and defamatory. That's something different altogether.'

‘Is it?' Denise's eyebrows arched.

‘Yes. Technically, it's against the law.'

‘Even if it's just his opinion?'

David chuckled uncharitably.

Denise couldn't let it go. ‘So if he says something that belittles the store or the company's profits, it's against the law, but if he says something racist that belittles the whole of humanity, it's okay because it's his opinion.'

‘I hear what you're saying, Denise. I really do. How long have you been with us? Six months?'

Denise nodded.

‘Then you've surely worked out that we get all types here. All types. Even the dull and ignorant. We might not like the way they dress or the way they smell or even the way they think, but our doors have to be open to everybody. Every day.'

‘Of course,' Denise said, contrite.

‘So keep the conversations with customers light, okay?'

‘Yes, of course.'

As Anita and Denise descended the stairs to the shop floor, Anita was grinning.

‘What?' Denise asked.

‘I do believe you picked a fight with the manager.'

Denise guffawed. ‘I did not!'

‘That's not very churchy of you.'

‘Truth be known, that shopper made me feel
very
Christian.'

‘Oh?'

Denise gritted her teeth. ‘So Christian I wanted to smite him!'

They laughed it off, but a cloud hung over Denise's head for the rest of the day, and when she stepped through the door at home later and saw Mal moulded into the couch with a beer in his hand, the cloud started raining.

She took her purse and her house keys into the kitchen but could find no bench space to put them on; Larry or his father had made cheese-and-tomato sandwiches and hadn't cleaned up.

‘Sorry about the mess,' Mal said, by way of greeting.

Lightning and thunder.

Denise took her wallet, her house keys and her jacket and slammed the door as she left.

It was dark outside when Larry emerged from his room. His father was frying eggs.

‘Where's Mum?'

‘I don't know, Larry. She came home earlier and took off again.'

‘When's she coming back?'

‘I just said . . .' Mal snarled, then his voice softened. ‘I don't know.'

They ate in front of the television with the sound down low, and when they were finished Mal washed the dishes and Larry dried.

‘What was your mum like?' Larry asked.

To Mal it seemed Larry's book of questions had fallen open on a random page, but for Larry the inquiry had been brewing for months. Years. Maybe his whole life.

‘My mum?' Mal said, staring into the soapy water. ‘She was pretty rough. She'd had a hard life, so that was to be expected.'

‘Oh?'

‘Her dad got sick when she was twelve and she had to leave school and go to work in the cannery in Adelaide to support the family. Never had much of a childhood herself, so she found it hard to cope with me being a kid. Taught me how to work hard and make do, that's for sure. And then when Dad died she started drinking and things got . . . yes.'

‘What? Things got what?'

Mal took a breath. ‘I don't know. I think she was angry at the world and she took it out on me.'

Larry thought about that for a moment and realised the answer was too vague. He needed to know the details of his father's hell. ‘How?'

Mal was quiet for a while. ‘Smacking to start with, for the smallest things, and as I got older she'd hit me with whatever was handy. Wooden spoon . . . belt. Have you seen those metal things you can get to poke the open fire?'

‘The heavy thing with the sort of bent point?'

‘Yes. Yes, that sort of thing.'

‘Really?'

Mal nodded. ‘That's when I left.'

‘How old were you?'

‘Fifteen.'

One year older than Larry. Only one year wiser and his dad had been forced to be a man.

‘What did you do?'

‘I travelled. Hitchhiking, mostly – you could do that in those days. Worked here and there picking fruit, carting hay, anything that would earn me a few dollars. I met people, lovely people mostly, who let me stay in their caravan or back room or shed or whatever, and I saw the sign in the post office here, looking for somebody to deliver mail. I'm still here. Still doing the job.'

‘What happened to your mum?'

Mal shrugged. ‘I didn't talk to her again. She'd be dead by now. She'd be eighty-two this year in December. If she isn't dead, she'll be living in the same house in North Adelaide.'

‘Don't you want to know?'

Mal was quiet for a long time. ‘Some things are better just left alone.'

‘Better that she doesn't even know that I exist? Doesn't even know that she's a grandmother?'

‘She knows you exist. I sent a photo of you and your mum to her just after you were born.'

An eerie feeling crept under Larry's skin. Mal had sent a photo, as Vince's daughter had done when her son was born. All the revelations about his family tree had set his mind reeling, and for a moment he considered the possibility that the world was strange enough that he could be Vince's grandchild. That was stupid. The timing was all wrong. That would make Hannah his mum. Besides, Mal's father had died in a car accident. He imagined his own grandmother hurting like Vince for the grandchild she'd never met.

‘She didn't write back?'

‘Well, no. I didn't put our address on the back.'

That felt cruel to Larry. Cruel and spiteful. See, the picture had said, see what I have made? See, I survived being beaten by a fire poker, and now I have a child and I'm sending you this picture as punishment so you'll always be reminded of what you've missed out on.

Larry realised that
everyone
has their own hell.

On the other side of Villea, in Anita Ward's lounge, Denise was drinking her second cup of tea. Thankfully Stan had been at his brother's house when she'd arrived. Thankfully Anita agreed that takeaway Chinese followed by mud cake in front of a good movie was a superlative idea.

‘No matter how hard my day has been I still come home to mess . . . Drives me crazy.'

‘My, my, you are a feisty one today, Denise.'

‘I'm sick of it. Neither of them knows how to open a laundry door, let alone operate the washing machine . . . and don't get me started on the toilet.'

‘Shock, horror,' Anita said. ‘You must be the only woman in the world who lives with domestically retarded men.'

‘Larry's not a man, he's a boy.'

‘Beg your pardon, I stand corrected. If you ever get so fed up with them that you have to move out, we'll always have room for you at our ironing board.'

Denise snorted. ‘Thank you. You're so generous.'

‘I'm serious,' Anita said, and patted Denise's hand. ‘You know you're always welcome.'

They watched Anita's copy of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's
Amelie
and Denise felt envy for beautiful young Amelie's independence and her quirky and exotic world of matchmaking, skimming stones and travelling garden gnomes. It was envy to begin with, but by the end of it she felt like slapping the smile off Amelie's annoyingly happy face. Denise's life seemed haggard in the light of that film.

Yet when she did make it home, just after eleven, and the kitchen shone and her boys were sleeping, she felt strangely honoured. If all she needed to do to be noticed was slam an occasional door and make herself scarce, she could do that.

SKEWERED
TOADFISH

J
EMMA
STOPPED GOING
to church. While her parents and younger brother and sister were as regular as crucifixes at church, Jemma didn't show. Larry never saw her on her bike, either. Some days he ached for her company. Church was heavier without her, and Guillermo wasn't always the cheeriest of companions.

It all became clear to Larry one sad weekend in September, the weekend after the siege in Beslan where Chechen terrorists held more than one thousand school children and teachers hostage for three days. Three hundred and thirty-one of them died when the terrorists detonated explosives.

Larry and Guillermo were in the park, listlessly kicking a soccer ball to each other.

‘I've seen her at school but I haven't spoken to her for ages. Months,' Guillermo said. ‘Ever since . . .'

‘Since when?' Larry demanded.

‘Do you remember a few months back we were all sitting on the end of the jetty, talking about hell?'

‘You told us about your neighbour being shot.'

‘Yes! Well, after you left, Jemma told me things.'

‘What things?'

‘About her life.'

‘I see.'

‘And she told me that she loved me.'

‘Oh.'

‘And I told her that I loved her, too.'

‘You do?'

‘As a friend.'