Six Impossible Things (2 page)

As if we could afford to fill it up with petrol, anyway.

There was a chance that Adelaide might have left my mother some cash too, but no such luck. She left her money to the National Gallery, which I doubt needs it as much as we do.

The only thing the lawyer handed over when we went to see him was a black – ebony – jewellery box. My mother’s eyes lit up but I could see the lawyer felt apologetic. So I knew she wouldn’t find what she was rummaging for.

‘Who got the diamonds?’ she asked finally.

‘A local shopkeeper.’

‘That’d be right,’ my mother said.

The box contained glass beads – clear with white streaks – a wooden spool of orange thread, some cardboard train tickets, nine small gold safety pins, a few copper one and two cent coins, and a handful of little carved insects and animals.

‘I believe these had sentimental value?’ he asked, sympathy leaking from his pinstripes.

My mother smiled. ‘I played with them when I was little. I used to line them up along the windowsill.’

Good times. Thank God I wasn’t a kid back then.

The lawyer cleared his throat, fiddled with a cuff and snuck a look at his watch. No doubt he had other clients out there awaiting disappointment.

‘Would you be interested in contesting the will?’ he asked.

‘Certainly not. Adelaide had a perfectly sound mind.’

The lawyer looked quietly pleased. You wouldn’t think so, because it would’ve meant more money for him, but I could tell he thought my mother’s response was honourable. So did I.

We get to keep the dog too. Howard. Though strictly speaking, on the inheritance ledger, that’s a minus because we have to feed him.

Being honourable obviously didn’t stop my mother from feeling pissed off. I had to remind her to slow down on the way home. We can’t exactly afford traffic fines these days. And, yes, we’re in the deep end without a floatie, but I’m pretty sure neither of us wants to die just yet. She was making a scary growling noise between clenched teeth.

‘Do you want to talk?’ I asked. Obviously hoping the answer would be no.

‘Talk, ha! I just don’t know what the point is, Dan,’ she said. I sensed she meant point of life, existence etc, rather than point of talking. Clearly a bit of life-coach action was required. Not really in my skill-set, unfortunately.

‘Well, I guess there’s always the old glass half full . . . isn’t there?’

‘That really only works if there’s actually something in the glass,’ she said. ‘We, sadly, are in a glass empty situation.’

‘There’s the house.’

‘Yes, the house. A mausoleum, certainly, but I suppose it’s better than the street.’

Stress level: extreme. It’s like she was a jar with the lid screwed on too tight, and inside the jar were pickles, angry pickles, and they were fermenting, and about to explode.

‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked.

‘Lunch.’

She groaned. Better than the growl.

Better than the street. Better than the growl. Things actually could be worse. But not much.

Where we live now is the exact middle in a row of five houses. It’s a massive double-storey Victorian Gothic terrace. The front facade forms a point over each house as though the top has been trimmed with giant pinking shears. There’s a brick-pillared balcony on each first floor and mean little gargoyles leaning on their elbows, jeering and grimacing in the dip of each zig. It’s in a book about Australian architecture – this actual building. They call it a ‘significant exemplar’. It’s grim – the sort of place you could set a horror film. Its red bricks are blackened with time, or pollution, or both.

Moving in took all of about five minutes.

I saw Estelle for the first time that day.

Invisible behind sheer curtains I stood in the bay window at the front of the house wishing to be anywhere but here, wishing it were two months ago and I had a mutant power that let me change the course of history, when she walked up the street, dreaming, completely unaware of the seismic shifts in my heart she was creating with each step.

She stopped outside our place and stared up into the bare branches of the footpath plane tree. First checking there was no one nearby she turned slowly around and around and around, framing her view of the twig-snaggled sky with a hand held to her eye.

Then she walked into the house next door, half-dizzy, smiling, and carrying my heart.

There’s this sky she likes.

T
HAT WAS THE LAST
day of term, and we’ve been here for the whole holidays.

This is what I’ve been doing:

1 Sleeping – like I already said.

2 Trying to catch another glimpse of Estelle. Several sightings. No meetings.

3 Getting to know Howard. Enigmatic Howard. All-knowing Howard. Long looks. Doesn’t say much.

4 Listening to my mother’s part in phone conversations with my father about me.

5 Worrying about them, and about the new school, and – to take my mind off those things . . .

6 Following the Historic Homes Trust people around while they catalogue the house’s contents.

I could tell the furniture guy, Bryce, was annoyed but Posy, who did glass and porcelain, was nice. By the end her sympathy was worse than him being pissed off. She’d ask me what my plans were for the day as she checked underneath things and made notes like ‘pair of first period Worcester plates’. It was awkward for both of us when the answer was always ‘not much’ – ie nothing.

Sometime deep into the second week when the comment about how it was too bad it wasn’t summer so I could go to the Fitzroy Baths had worn right through, she said, ‘Joining a club can be a good way to get to know people, Dan. What do you like doing?’

‘Reading. Mostly.’

I wanted to make her feel better . . .

‘There’s chess. Only I don’t like people who like chess. Not the ones I’ve met anyway.’

On her last day when every item in the house had been catalogued, tagged, coded and insured, she casually mentioned the Kids’ Help Line.

‘There’s no problem that can’t be helped by talking about it. At your age sometimes things can seem worse than they are . . .’

I sighed. ‘Things aren’t great, but it’s not like I’m suicidal. And I do have a friend – he’ll be back soon.’

Maybe you’re lucky if you’ve got one friend.

Mine – Fred – is staying with his mother these holidays. She’s living in London for six months, in Chelsea, studying Georgian underwear at the National Art Library. It’s a thesis, not a fetish.

For the rest of the six months Fred will be living with his stepmother and his dad – Plan B and the Gazelle.

One of only two good things about us moving here is that I live closer to Fred now, which will be great, when he gets back.

‘Anyway,’ I said, hoping to reassure Posy, ‘who’d look after Howard if I topped myself?’

I was Howard’s new meal ticket and he wasn’t letting me out of his sight. He looked up on cue when he heard his name – just one eye and one ear. Even in his preferred state of semiconsciousness he knew exactly what was going down.

What the house smells of is piss, by the way. Soaked in, marinated, wall-to-wall urine. We’ve been trying to get rid of it, but if you think spray-on deodoriser mixed with peed-on rugs is an improvement on the original smell then you’re lucky you’ve never had to choose between them.

Howard is partly responsible, though definitely not to blame. He must have spent a lot of time stuck inside. And by the time Adelaide died, she was using a potty at night. Fair enough, too – it would have been a major hike to the bathroom for a ninety-one year old. Also there were a few cats. The whole gang pretty much treated the house as one big toilet. The cats have scrammed.

Everything needs to be steam cleaned. My mother is fighting with the Historic Homes Trust about who should pay. ‘They’ll bloody own it all one day, why the hell shouldn’t they cough up for freaking maintenance?’

‘No freaking reason in the bloody world,’ I said. It really killed me when she used her polite mother swearwords.

She smiled at my amusement. ‘I’m a little overwrought.’

‘You can’t tell.’

That cheered her up a bit. Some people don’t think sarcasm is funny, but we do, in our family. Our shrunken-up family. Our one-third-less-than-it-used-to-be family.

If you’re wondering how my mother is coping with the whole gay husband thing, she seems semi-okay. But it’s hard to know for sure. Any time I ask how she’s feeling, she deflects with flippancy. ‘Spurned, but strong’, she’ll say, or ‘bitter, but adjusting’, ‘hurt, but not vengeful’ . . .

At least here I can’t hear her crying at night.

I haven’t heard anything from next door through the party wall either, despite pressing my ear to every accessible section of it before remembering that the paint is probably original and lead-based, therefore toxic. Possible lingering death added to my list of medium-term concerns.

The only noise I’ve heard is a kind of scratching and bumping from the attic sometimes.

I’ve investigated the noises and found certain unexpected things up there. When I found what I found, I had a choice. I may have made the wrong choice. Twice. And I’m still trying to figure out why I did what I did.

I’ve talked it over with Howard. I wish I knew what he thought. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s a disapproval vibe. Hard to tell. I’m still at beginner-level dog, though he’s clearly fluent in human. And I don’t just mean English. He reads minds. It’s unnerving.

My mother can be helpful when it comes to moral conundrums, but she’s been missing in action lately, because of dealing with the break-up and trying to set up her business. That was another battle with the ‘bloody Historic Homes Trust’.

She had to change the kitchen around a bit – get some shelves built, have an industrial oven and fridge installed . . .

‘And I hope we’ve seen the last of the rodents,’ she said. ‘Whatever you do, don’t mention that if you happen to meet any customers, Dan.’

‘Even I know rats aren’t a plus for a food business,’ I said, mildly offended.

‘Please don’t even say that word! I’m still traumatised.’

She’s going to be making wedding cakes. It wouldn’t occur to everyone in the throes of a marriage breakdown, but we do irony in this house in addition to sarcasm.

I
OPEN THE DOOR
to Fred – bespectacled, bepimpled, smiling Fred.

‘My friend,’ I say.

A long pause.

‘My rock’n’roll friend,’ he responds.

We kill ourselves laughing. It’s so good to see him.

The greeting is from a Go-Betweens song my mother used to play in the car when she drove us home from school. There’s a verrry long beat between the two lines, and for no good reason waiting for that second line used to really crack us up when we were little.

Then my mother would start laughing too and say, ‘Have some respect. That’s one of my favourite bands.’ It’s a cold shock, remembering when she was really happy, versus now – brave smiles when she can manage them, grim when she thinks I’m not looking.

I stand back and let Fred in.

He hits the wall of smell.

‘Man, that’s bad. I thought you must have been exaggerating.’

‘It’s worst for the first five minutes, then you start numbing out.’

We pause in the hallway, coming into range of my mother on the phone. ‘. . . what do you suggest I feed him on? He’s a growing boy. And it still costs money, Rob, wherever he’s at school.’

Fred and I look at each other. I clear my throat. In front of anyone else that would have been really embarrassing.

‘It doesn’t stay this bad,’ he mutters. ‘The first few months are the worst.’

I steer us into the front sitting rooms. It’s like a museum here. Like three huge houses’ contents swallowed by one huge house.

With a sweeping gesture to the burdened mantelpiece, I say, ‘Objects d’art, Fred, feast your eyes.’

‘Yeah, thanks, ’cause the nose sure isn’t. Feasting.’

I draw back the faded velvet curtain to throw some more light on the scene.

Fred takes a look around. ‘Holy moley. I’ve never seen this much . . . stuff.’

I run through a few of the items. ‘Japanned regency armchairs with squab cushions –’

‘Someone Japanned them? Since when is Japan a verb?’

‘It’s a lacquer finish. And squab –’

‘What the cushions are stuffed with.’

‘Feathers of. There are no actual dead squabs in the cushions.’

Fred punches me.

‘I realise that, smartarse.’

There’s nothing more satisfying than being stupid with a friend. Except an Estelle sighting. It feels weird there’s a whole Estelle ‘thing’ that Fred doesn’t know about. I’m not ready to tell him yet.

‘This is an English Pembroke table with perimeter decoration of inlaid boxwood. And this bulgy number is a boulle tea-caddy,’ I say, remembering what Posy told me.

‘What’s fricken boulle?’ Fred wants to know.

‘Tortoiseshell with decorative brass inlay. Named after the guy who invented it.’

‘Right.’

‘And check this out.’ I take Fred over to the desk. ‘Rococo ormolu mounts – that’s gold-plated brass – and look underneath it ...’