Vic, Rita, Michael and the Millers continue their conversation as they walk parallel to each other along their respective dirt footpaths. Two families, speaking to each other across the street. Michael has nothing to say and is watching his father commenting on the night and the sky, when he stops in mid-sentence, as if he can’t remember what to say next. As if the tracks of his thoughts had run out. He even stops in his stride and looks back to Rita and then Michael, passing the sentence over to them to complete, while he remembers what he meant to say.
But Michael’s lost in his own memories. Somewhere about him he hears the voice of his mother talking to their neighbours, his father still has a puzzled, lost look on his face, and his mother is constantly glancing at him as she talks. Their voices are quiet and clear like chimes.
But they soon fade into silence, and the street dissolves under Michael’s feet. Michael has seen that lost look on his father’s face before. He knows it all too well now. The last time, a few months before, he had had to unmuddle his father’s mind so that the lost look would go away from his eyes.
Michael had been woken by the alarm clock in his parents’ room. It was early in the morning, dark and cold, and outside the rain was falling softly on the roof of the house as it had been all night. He closed his eyes and imagined it falling all over the suburb, on all the roofs and all the houses, on the golf course greens, the fairways, the clubhouse, the school and the dirt streets. Fine, steady, invisible rain, except when caught by the streetlights.
In his parents’ room the alarm clock was still ringing and he knew his father hadn’t stirred. His mother was away travelling in the country. For the whole week she would be travelling from country town to country town demonstrating washing machines to the audiences in the large country stores. In the front room the alarm was still ringing and he knew he would have to get up and wake his father himself or he would be late for work.
But it was cold and the sound of the rain on the roof outside made him want to stay in bed. He sank down into the warmth of the bed and rubbed his feet together. The alarm was beginning to wind down. Its ringing slowed, then faded altogether. His father had slept through the whole thing and Michael knew he would have to get up then or he would fall back into sleep himself.
Before he could change his mind he threw the blankets back and his bare feet hit the floor. He crossed the room, opened his door and stomped into the hallway which was heavy with the stale smell of last night’s beer and cigarettes. He switched the light on and stood, adjusting his eyes to the glare. There were bottles on the kitchen table and a large, filled ashtray. It was always the same when his mother was away.
He slapped on the light in his parents’ room and shook his father till he woke. His father’s eyes opened slowly and he looked about the room, trying to establish where on earth he was, then turned to Michael, scrutinising his face for a moment and pronounced Michael’s name. It was a question, a statement, a greeting, all in one. His father’s eyes were now open, but his mind was muddled. Michael could see that. He went to the kitchen, brought back a chair, and sat by his father’s side. From previous experience he knew it would take time to unmuddle his father’s mind.
‘You slept through the alarm.’
‘Did I?’
His father spoke with disbelief, as if he had never slept through an alarm before.
‘It’s four-thirty.’
‘Is it?’
‘Do you know what shift you’re on?’
His father sat up and rested his head back against the bed. He was staring blankly across the room, running his forefinger down along the bridge of his nose, but the answer wouldn’t come. Eventually, he turned to Michael and shook his head. There was fear in his eyes, like the fear of a frightened, confused child, and Michael knew he would have to speak slowly and clearly if he was going to unmuddle his father’s mind. He would have to speak to him like a child and he didn’t want to because his father was not a child. Michael was the child, he knew that. All his friends wanted to grow up fast so they could be old enough to drive cars, smoke cigarettes and leave home. But Michael wanted to be his age, to act his age, and stay a child as long as he could. But his father was staring back at him with confused eyes and Michael knew he would have to stop being a child for a little while, and speak to his father slowly and clearly, so that his memory could come back and his mind could be good again.
‘You’re on the morning shift,’ Michael said.
‘Am I son?’
‘You start at six. Do you want me to call Ed?’
Vic looked at Michael blankly.
‘Who?’
Michael looked to the window and the faint, silvery streetlight outside, then turned back to his father.
‘You don’t know who Ed is?’
His father clasped his hands together and looked down to them as if praying, but the memory wouldn’t come and he looked up to Michael ashamed that he didn’t know the answer.
‘Ed is your fireman. He’s been your fireman for three years. He’s been to dinner here. Ed.’
His father slapped the side of the bed as the memory returned.
‘Yes. Ed.’
‘Shall I call Ed?’
‘No,’ his father said in a sudden panic, ‘Don’t call him.’
‘Do you know what time you start?’
‘What time do I start, boy?’
‘Six. It’s a goods train.’
‘Where to?’
Michael named the town and his father smiled and nodded at him.
‘Yes. That’s it. That’s right.’
Michael leaned back in his chair. Sometimes the process took longer, sometimes it took less. It all depended. The alertness returned to his father’s eyes and Michael knew he would be all right. His mind had been cleared and his eyes were no longer those of a confused child. He thanked Michael for waking him and Michael returned the chair to the circular wooden table in the kitchen and stumbled back into the darkness of his bedroom where he lay listening to the faint, steady rain falling on the roof.
Soon, there was the distant tinkling of a teaspoon in a cup and he knew that, after having cleared away the evidence of the night’s drinking, his father would sip black tea in the kitchen with the wireless turned low so as not to disturb Michael.
Later the back door opened, the cat, curled up and sheltering from the rain on the back step complained at being shifted, and Michael heard his father wheeling his bicycle along the gravel driveway. It was too early for the first train and his father would ride his bicycle from their suburb to the North Melbourne yards.
He pictured the hunched figure of his father disappearing along the dirt road in the rain, navigating the potholes and puddles by the sparsely placed streetlights. And he recalled the local doctor speaking very quietly in the kitchen one morning to Michael and his mother. He had spoken slowly so as not to assume anything and an important lesson be understood.
Michael had woken that morning, a year ago, to the sound of his mother’s screams. She was calling out his father’s name, again and again, and Michael had rushed into his parents’ bedroom to see his mother standing by the bed, his father straining for breath and froth coming from his mouth. Later, the doctor had arrived, examined Vic, and that was when he had sat Michael and his mother down in the kitchen and explained to them what had happened.
At one point the doctor had spoken in French. These, he explained, were medical terms, but said in French. There was grand mal and there was petit mal. Michael’s father had just suffered a grand mal. It was frightening to watch, but as long as he took his medication and didn’t drink he would be all right. The grand mal was more frightening than the petit mal because it lasted much longer and looked worse. A petit mal might last only a few seconds, or even minutes, like a sudden memory loss. It quickly passed.
But during that time the mind would be muddled. Thoughts and messages would be sent to the mind but make no sense. The memory would be lost for a short time, and Vic would need help to unscramble his mind and make it right again. During that time, the doctor added, he will be frightened because there will be a part of his mind that knows that the rest of it is muddled.
There was an old wooden spoon in the kitchen drawer for when it was worse. For when his father suffered a big fit, and would not wake until the fit was finished. It could go on for an hour or more. The doctor had told him that during that time, when his father was unconscious, there was the danger that he might swallow his own tongue and choke on it. It hardly ever happened, the doctor reassured Michael and Rita, but it could. For during these fits, the doctor went on, his father’s jaw would shut tight like a steel trap. His teeth would be clamped together, they would grind against each other, froth would bubble from his lips and he would moan as if he were in pain. But he wouldn’t be. They would have to remember that. It always looked worse than it actually was, and when his father woke he would be tired more than anything, and his jaw would ache.
Because he is already the stronger of the two, Michael’s job during these times, and it is nearly always in the early morning, is to take the old wooden spoon that is kept in the kitchen drawer and prise his father’s mouth open so that the spoon sits in between his front teeth and keeps his father’s tongue in place, so that he won’t swallow it and he won’t choke. He must be careful that he is not bitten, not that his father will mean to bite him, but sometimes his jaw will suddenly snap shut despite Michael’s best efforts. These are the worst times, and it is Michael’s job to sit by his father’s side throughout the fit. Till his jaw relaxes, his eyes open, and he returns to consciousness.
This morning was easy. Michael lay back in the darkness of his room, alone in the house, thinking about all this. His father had just had a petit mal. That was why he didn’t know the details of the day. And that’s why his eyes were confused and frightened, because he knew that his mind had briefly gone and he could never be sure he would get it all back again; his mind, and the world, the lifetime of memories it contained.
Done with all the talk of the sky and the warmth of the night for the time being, the conversation in the street stops and the two families move forward again in parallel lines towards the Englishman’s house. Soon, they will be at the Bedser’s party and they can already hear the faint sounds of music issuing from the opened windows of the house and pouring out into the warm suburban air.
Michael is looking forward to the party, to the ice cream and cakes and lemonade. But he is also thinking of those nights when he sits by his father’s side waiting for the fits to pass or unmuddling his mind, and wishing it didn’t happen.