Phillip’s crazy call came the night Hannah started converting her cats to vegetarianism. She was propped up on a neckroll and pillows, poring over recipes from a vegetarian pet cookbook. I couldn’t believe it. I told her that animals shouldn’t be subject to human morality, and she insisted that I was forcing my steak-and-eggs Australian morality on them. “It’s okay to determine what kids eat,” she’d said, “so why not cats, as long as it’s good for them?”
“One of my old schoolmates back in Seaford was so attached to his dog that he’d share turns having licks on an ice-cream cone. They both came down with the flu.”
“Your story has nothing to do with our argument.”
I think it did, but in any case, you can’t tell me it’s right to make a cat eat tofu.
There was another reason I was sulking. We hadn’t had sex since the week we’d met after the gig at Lounge. I didn’t want to be a brute, like her last boyfriend, the conductor, who she claimed forced sex on her. But I lay there, lusting for her great cheekbones and her unbelievable spine that flowed through her petite body. Not to mention those perky white norgs.
Hannah had on peach satin underwear from Georges, one of a whole drawerful of horny, not-too-revealing underwear. Hannah never put it all out there; that’s what got me barred up the second she got undressed. Lately, she limited my advances to letting me feel her groin through her panties with my feet, which she thought were beautiful and graceful. (I secretly think my feet are pretty great, too. They’re among the few parts of my body I don’t have complaints about. Even the little toes are in perfect proportion. I could be a male foot model.) Hannah’s eyes were a glassy gray; they set off her red hair. A frigid stunner who I wanted to fuck about every five seconds.
Lying there with nothing to do but watch her read, scrape my heel on her body, or otherwise mark time, I started comparing her to Rachel. I hadn’t thought about not hearing from New York in a while.
Rachel’s eyes were more startling than beautiful, those deep-set brown circles that chased you everywhere. And she was much taller than Hannah, five eight or so; the crown of her head came up to my forehead. Despite her model height, she was not what you’d call a graceful girl. She knocked over our standing lamp near the TV at least once a week, or her black tights often had a ladder that ran down to her calf. And despite the fact that she was urbangothic white, as she called it, even in the summer, Rachel insisted on wearing black basketball runners everywhere; high-tops, she called them. She could have bowled everyone over with her knockout legs if she wore silk stockings and European high heels like Hannah, but she didn’t give a shit. “It’s a look sure, but high-tops without socks doesn’t look good on your pale skin,” I’d say.
“As your closest friend in the Southern Hemisphere,” I once said, “I’m telling you that you could tone it down more.” She was headed out the door for her shift, in her purple American bowling shirt embroidered with the name Susie, tucked into her bright red miniskirt. And those fucking high-tops.
“Will you chill out? Is there a law against color? The world is drab enough.” Rachel had a name and an answer for everything.
Phillip once said it best: “She’s great, but sometimes I wish she’d shut the fuck up.” I didn’t know how Rachel was in bed; I imagined full-on sex with her would be fun, but wordy.
A sound like feet trudging through mud came from the corner. Marjoram and Smudgeface were devouring their Happy Cat liver and bacon. Poor suckers had no idea of the meatless fate that awaited them. I was bored. Hannah had a book by Rilke on her Art Deco dresser.
“My old flatmate Rachel read Rilke. But she thought his writing was ‘pompous male poet sentimental mush, like Rimbaud’s and Verlaine’s.’” Rachel was always going off into tirades like that, even when she didn’t mean it; she made me write down those two writers’ names to force me to check them out of the library and see if what she said was true. I have to confess I never did. I could tell that once again she was thinking midair. Like that time I drew a caricature of her from a bad angle and she acted like I was her executioner for fifteen minutes, and I felt like utter shit for it, like a boar, and then a second later she asked if there was milk left in the fridge.
“Rachel is not a delicate woman,” Hannah sniffed, “Rilke is sublime.” I tried to kiss Hannah’s sublime little breast, but she said, “I’m reading now, Colin. Why don’t we do that stuff when we’re in Mount Buller?” Her sister had a share at Mount Buller for the ski season.
So, we were lying there, frustrated bastard and bombshell Kelvinator on the coldest setting, when Phillip rang with the news. “Can you get that, honey?” she asked, without looking up from her cookbook.
“Leser residence, Colin speaking,” I said, like Hannah had told me to—she didn’t approve of my standard “Yeah?”
“Mate!” Phillip said, “Wait until you hear this! Angus rang the house. That Aboriginal pop band Yothu Yindi, you know them?”
“Of course—”
“Well, the lead singer’s developed nodes on his vocal chords from having one too many global gigs during the official United Nations’ Year of the Indigenous People—”
“And you’re excited by this?” I asked.
“Hold on. They’re in the middle of a tour with INXS, and the promoters needed another opening Australian band since it was a Foster’s tour, and guess who that band is? I’ll give you a hint: you’re right, Angus is one cluey bastard of a manager.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“He had Deirdre from the Sydney EMI office ring their American office to remind them about our Yank-friendly press hook with the murder. And the tour’s promoters rang Angus, who brilliantly told them we’d perform for a third of Yothu Yindi’s fee. EMI’s and Atlantic’s American offices struck a deal—they’re gonna tie our song to the new INXS ballad—if a station doesn’t play “Gnome,” it won’t get the new INXS single first in their market.”
“We’re gonna replace Yothu Yindi on their last three shows in America. Buffalo, Syracuse, and the finale in a New York City arena!”
“Jesus!” I almost screamed—his words were sinking in. Hannah looked up from her feline deprivation recipe for a second. “Jesus!” I pulled the phone cord out of her room and lowered my voice to a whisper: “But wait, shit, Phillip, Buffalo’s in America? Isn’t that where Aunt Sally is?”
“Relax, Colin, America is shorthand for North America. Stuart’s not going to show up at the Canadian gig anyway.”
“But what if Aunt Sally’s relis see the press, or someone else she knows?”
“Stuart is not a bloke who’d make many friends these days. Anyhow, they’re not going to run the murder victim’s face in the newspaper, they’ll print that it happened over in Australia, and that there was pandemonium when it happened—”
“What if Angus gets them Doug Lang’s clip?”
“Mate, you’re gonna have to ease up if we’re going to pull this off. I’ll talk to Doug to remind him that Stuart’s in Canada.”
“Yeah, good.”
“We’re meeting Angus at Mario’s, in the back booths—ten A.M. sharp. I’ll ring Mick-O as soon as I’m off with you. Angus already booked us a flight. Do you have a passport?”
“No.”
“Bring your driver’s license and birth certificate then. Angus can get an emergency passport and visa for you through Ausmusic—they have an arrangement with the U.S. Consulate. We’ve got to get photos taken right after brekkie, ’cause we’re eligible for something called cultural ambassador status.”
I hung up the receiver. I had Hannah’s attention. “What was that about? Why are you looking like that—Colin?” I blew on the antique glasses she bought in a shop in Armadale, which she used for reading books in bed, books like Italian Pottery, A Field Guide to Roses, or A Treasury of Romantic Poems.
“Oh, stop! You’re breathing like a dog!” But she was smiling. She knew something good was up.
“We’ve been asked to play an arena in New York City. In New York City! Jesus Fucking Christ.”
“You’re kidding! That’s amazing.”
“We’re replacing Yothu Yindi—”
“The Aboriginal band?”
“Long story—the lead singer has nodes on his vocal chords and—”
“Who’s Aunt Sally?”
Phillip was right. I’d let my cool slip. Everything was going great. “Aunt Sally’s a Canadian aunt of Phillip’s who’s a Born Again. She hates the fact he’s a rock singer, calls it devil’s work.”
“Oh.”
I sat naked on the corner of Hannah’s bed, my tic starting up from the excitement. Should I ring Rachel to say we were coming over, go ahead and roll out the red carpet? Hannah startled me by caressing my back and neck. She gently bit me on my nipple, and we made love for the second time in the month.
• • •
My seat was next to Angus, who was telling me about how I should talk to the American media. The plane headed down the runway for liftoff. I wanted him to shut up. I had never been on a plane before and was nervous as hell. Angus had been overseas to America and Europe more times than he’d ever dreamed. “New Orleans’s good,” he said. “Europe, okay. Seen one castle, seen them all.”
I passed air as the plane lifted, because of the hemorrhoid air-pump fiasco. Hannah had done this crazy thing that night we finally had sex: the last few minutes before I had been about to come, she’d slid her finger right up my arse. I mean right up in, prodding around with her long sharp index fingernail. Fucking weird. It felt like she was fishing with barbed wire in there, but I didn’t say anything. She must know what she was doing—a Kama Sutra thing perhaps, since she had that on her shelf. But the next morning I bled out my arse. I was afraid Hannah had done some damage. My flight was in twenty-four hours. I enlisted my mother for help getting an emergency spot with Dr. Leach, her doctor.
Mum paused on the phone when I told her what area needing examining. “What exactly happened here, Colin?”
“I wasn’t thinking. I was trying to clean an itchy bit out of my bottom with a screwdriver.”
“Oh, Colin!” Mum burst out laughing.
“Don’t make me tell you anymore, please Mum, please—”
“Can I tell your father? He looks so bored.”
“Mum, please no.”
“I’ll ring Dr. Leach for you if you promise to buy me a bottle of Smoke. That’s a fragrance my new neighbor Caroline is going on and on about. You can’t buy it yet in Georges or David Jones yet. Will you write that down?”
“Hold on a sec, okay.”
“Smoke, by Ivan Stanbury, the American designer. Caroline picked it up in a department store called Bloomingdale’s, if that’s any help.”
“Deal. But ring right away.”
“I’m so proud of you, Colin. You always said fame would happen and it did. My little rock star.”
Dr. Leach was on a golf holiday up on the Gold Coast, but Mum got me an appointment with Dr. Leach’s intern.
“Just fix me,” I said to him. The intern hooked me up to an air pump mechanism. He left the machine unattended while he took a call from his girlfriend or wife. After a while I felt like a blimp was up my arse, and I called out to him, but he assured me that it’s normal to feel pain. I screamed after another few seconds—that made him take a look—the gauge was at fucking maximum. The jerk apologized in a fluster, no doubt afraid I was going to sue.
I told him not to worry, but I fumed like hell while he wrote out an ointment prescription for the plane. The side effect was that I passed air nonstop since my appointment; not smells, just air.
“What’s that noise?” Angus said.
“Sorry, I had a crazy meal last night in celebration,” I said, trying to mask my terror at leaving the ground at a forty-five degree angle.
“You’re a legend, Colin,” he said.
When the plane evened out a bit, the stewardess by the curtain let a pretty girl from the economy seats up front so the girl could ask Phillip for his autograph. His fan looked like she was minutes away from her puberty burst. Phillip tried to look like he didn’t care, that it happened all the time, but I knew it was his second autograph, even with the national publicity we had. Australia isn’t a nation for celebrity worship. I could see it on his face: Phillip hoped America was all that and more.
Mick-O was asleep, his head propped up against Phillip’s shoulder. Phillip and Kerri were having a bit of a row over the autograph request and the fact that Kerri was on the plane at all. She somehow managed to get a visa at the last second and Phillip was mad as hell as he envisioned himself with a swarm of New York nymphomaniacs.
Hannah had a ceramics seminar she had to give at Daylesford. She didn’t even try booking a flight. I was supposed to be back in Australia in a month, and Hannah said she could use the solo time to read. I was disappointed that she couldn’t come. I wanted to have someone who mattered watching me on stage, someone I could talk to afterwards, and if I’m honest here, someone I could show off to INXS. Hannah turned heads.
Angus nudged me awake for our dinner; he’d put down my tray, and the food was waiting for me.
“Thanks, mate.”
“Not a problem.”
There was a piece of paper accompanying the meal:
To celebrate our new, improved business class to the South Pacific and the United Nations’ Year of the Indigenous People, this month, for business and first class only, Continental Airlines has added special items to our menu for flights between America, Australia, and New Zealand. Some of these items may be incorporated into your meals. From North America: turkey, cranberry sauce, wild rice stuffing, blue corn chips. From New Zealand: mussels appetizer, Hangi-style pork. From Australia: barramundi, mock emu stew, wattleseed ice cream. We hope you enjoy your unusual meal and take time out to consider how important it is to preserve indigenous culture.
I heard Phillip say to Mick-O, “For Godsake use a fucking fork.” Our flight got the barramundi, which tasted suspiciously like the everyday flake you get at a fish and chips shop. For a bonus dessert in addition to the wattleseed ice cream, there was a chocolate chip “cookie” made in Sydney. I hated the way everyone, especially Dale and Geoff, my second cousins from Dad’s side, let American words replace those I grew up with. My cousins said sneakers instead of runners, cookies instead of bikkies. Geoff, who was fourteen, wore a Chicago Bulls sweatshirt instead of a footy guernsey.
“Would you like something to drink with your dinner?” the black American stewardess asked. She sounded like Rachel taking a drink order, like the job was beneath her.
“A Coke would be great.”
“Are you excited about your tour, Mr. Dunforton?”
“How do you know I’m on tour?”
“Flight attendants know everything,” she smiled. She had adult braces like Liam’s wife. “We even know which customers in first class used coupons to get there.”
“Well, in that case, I better tell the truth. Yeah, I’m pretty excited. I’ve never been further than Brisbane.”
“Am I the first American you’ve met, too?”
“No, but I only know one Yank well. You sound a bit like her.” I stopped myself from saying that she was the first black person I’d met. Even though I hadn’t been overseas before, I knew that it wouldn’t be a good thing to say. I had one of Oprah’s shows running in my head—“Dialogue between the Races,” the one Phillip and I imitated for a week—this black girl with tight rows of plaits said straight into the camera, “No, don’t ask me if you can touch them, I’m not going to touch your awful perm, you hear me?”
“Is your friend from Baltimore, too?”
“New York City.”
“People from Baltimore sound nothing like people from New York City. But you’ll find that out soon enough, that’s what travel is for.”
The old stick on the aisle turned out to be an eighty-four-year-old amateur scientist who was touring the world, at his own expense, to convince skeptics to change the week from seven to eleven days. “Son, we made a terrible calculation ’round about the Roman times.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
Fortunately, just then one of the stewardesses gave us customs forms to fill out. Welcome to the United States of America, are you carrying fruit?—that sort of thing. Angus, who had awful breath from the flight, leaned over. “Tick no for everything.”
“Angus, do we fill out this form even though we’re flying on to Canada?”
“What?”
“Aren’t we going to Canada first for the Buffalo gig? The plane at two o’clock—”
“Buffalo’s in the States, Colin, in New York State.” He was looking at me like I was a dunce. “Remember, you only got a visa for the States?”
“Sorry, I’m talking crap,” I said, trying to suppress a class-A heart attack. “I thought it was right near Toronto, that one visa is good for North America, and—”
“Well, Buffalo’s right up there on the Canadian border, but mate, you better not say idiotic things like that to the press.”
I tapped Phillip on the shoulder and motioned for him to walk to the back of the cabin with me, past the curtain to the economy toilets. I pretended to be stretching my legs as I poured water into a paper cone. “Buffalo’s in the States—Angus told me—the top of New York State. Our flight from LA goes to Buffalo, New York State, not Buffalo, Canada.”
“I was sure Buffalo was in Canada,” Phillip said nervously. “Maybe there’s a Buffalo in Canada, too, like Perth in Scotland and Australia.”
“Maybe.”
“Look, when you and Peter made up that Ian MacKenzie ID for Stuart, did you get Stuart a visa for Canada or the States? Did the plane ticket say Canada or the States?”
“Fuck, Phillip, I don’t notice things like plane codes. We didn’t even look at ours, right? I told Peter that ‘Ian MacKenzie’ needed a visa for Buffalo, and he gave it to me with the other papers. What country was it for?—you saw it, too.”
“I can’t remember,” he said. “Christ. Let’s calm down though. What’s the big deal if he’s in New York State? He’s not about to come to our shows—”
“What if he thinks of blackmailing us for more drug money?”
“He’s not going to do that. He’s not that smart—Mick-O told me he thinks Stuart can’t even read. He never signed his name to anything; he x-ed the paper. He tried to tell Mick-O that he heard Danny Death used to do that for autographs. This is a bloke who thought the mob was after him. Nah, it’s going to be fine. We’re driving ourselves crazy. Let’s go back and get on with becoming mega-stars, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. We walked back to our seats.
“That must have been some dinner,” Angus cringed after another whammy of air-pump-fiasco air came out when I sat down.
After clearing customs, we raced across the street to catch our connecting flight. Everything in that mad rush between terminals seemed different: the big palm trees, the cars, the air, even the metal looked sturdier to me.
We landed at Greater Buffalo International Airport five hours later. Angus handed us each $500 in mixed American bills. Then Kerri made us wait while she changed some of her money. American money all looked identical to me—who’s the idiot that decided to make every denomination the same green? I used a fifty-dollar bill for a cigarette packet at the airport newsstand. I wouldn’t have taken the change if the cashier didn’t come running after me.
A limousine that EMI ordered was waiting to take us to our suites at the Hyatt Regency Buffalo. Even Angus looked surprised, like it was sinking in that we were really in the big swim, that this was a huge gig even for a hot-shot manager. The highway was backed up due to a collision; our driver took his chances on side streets. Buffalo houses lacked the front lawns Melbourne houses have. Most of them were double-storied with a chimney, houses an Australian kid reared on American picture books would draw. Several homes had an American flag hanging from the front. If an Australian family was so shamelessly patriotic, they’d be laughed out of town.
At the check-in desk, I offered to share a room with Mick-O. Angus wanted to spend more time prepping Phillip, his ‘lead attorney’ for the interviews the New York EMI office had arranged. On the writing table was a basket filled with grapes, bananas, apples, two small boxes of American cereal, and two red kazoos. “G’day Tall Poppies!” the note attached read. “On behalf of the Hyatt Regency staff, welcome to Erie County, home of Niagara Falls, the Buffalo Bills, and the birthplace of Cheerios and the kazoo. Break a leg!”
Phillip munched on a red apple with little knobs on the bottom. It looked like the ones in the Time-Life books we used for references in my illustration class. My class partner, true-blue Peter who doctored Stuart’s papers, had smiled when I said the apple didn’t look right, that it hadn’t developed fully yet. Peter had spent a month in San Francisco and knew they were U. S. apples, delicious apples. I had a song in my head I’d plugged into on one of the legs of our flight, by the Cowsills. I hadn’t heard it in years: “The Rain, the Park, and Other Things.” The Skychannel host had said the Cowsills were the band they based the Partridge Family on, which I had to be sure to tell Rachel on the odd chance she didn’t know that already. I sang out the backing vocals. “And I knew (I knew, I knew, I knew, I knew) / She could make me happy (happy, happy).”
“Are you listening?”
“Huh?” I said, looking up at Phillip’s face, which needed a wash. “Sorry, I had a song in my head.”
“You always have a song in your head, Colin.”
“Mate, you still got sleep in your right eye.”
“Me and Angus are going to work on my delivery,” he said, shutting one lid and flicking something crusty towards me. “Then I’m going to go over to Kerri’s for a bit.” Kerri was staying a few blocks away at the Best Western. After she’d surprised Phillip on the plane, Angus had insisted that during the tour she had to stay, at her expense, in a separate hotel. “A coupled man is a liability when you’re trying to build a fan base,” Angus had determined. A bastard thing to do, considering Kerri was on an aerobics instructor’s wage.
Mick-O was alive and kicking, no small wonder after sleeping for most of twenty-five hours. I wasn’t as hyper as him, but I agreed to go down to the lobby to have a look around.
Mick-O ordered two Foster’s and brought them back to our table. I gave him a quizzical look. Back home he despised Foster’s, he was a Toohey Red man.
“They’re our sponsor,” he said, “did you forget? Our meal ticket.”
The Foster’s tasted like piss. Rachel once told me that there was a much lower legal alcohol limit in the States, even for imported beer.
Behind the lobby was an actual pub, with a piano man noodling around on the keys. Mick-O talked me into going inside. I was reluctant because I was still passing air, and there were women inside. Over by the windows, there was a table of five girls with big hair and awful make-up—giggling in our direction.
“American girls look like they’re from bloody Broadmeadows,” Mick-O said, referring to a suburb of Melbourne not known for its fashion sense. But he wanted to go over. A man without standards.
“Nah,” I said, “I’ll pass.” But he went over anyway and asked the prettiest of the lot for a light.
“Are you with the INXS tour?” I heard the girl ask in a loud whiny voice. Mick-O floored the table when he said yes. He bought the girls a round with one of the bills Angus had given him. He waved me over.
“Are your parents convicts?” one of the girls said.
“No, but I’m a relative of Dame Nellie Melba,” Mick-O replied.
“Is she royalty?”
“Nah. The greatest opera singer in the world. She has a perfectly curved palate. My whole family does. That’s why I can sing perfect pitch, right, Colin?”
So perfect we stuck him back in the drum section, where all great opera singers thrive. Nellie Melba died when? World War II?
“You girls want tickets for tomorrow’s show?”
They squealed. Angus was going to kill him for this. He went to the bar to get matches, and I followed.
“Aren’t you ready to call it a night yet?”
“Colin, I’m kicking goals here. We have our pick.”
“Happy choosing. I’m going upstairs.”
I practically collapsed from exhaustion.
Moans and groans from the other bed woke me up. I peeked at the alarm clock: four A.M. I saw Mick-O sucking on a breast. I pretended I was still asleep.
We had to perform three days in Buffalo instead of one. Originally it was going to be at Rich Stadium, which held 80,000, and not Memorial Auditorium, capacity 16,000. Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton were rained out the week before. Since they were still touring in New York, the mayor of Buffalo, their devoted fan, had personally promised Kenny the date verbally committed by the city’s cultural commissioner to INXS.
The tour promoter’s representative went ballistic at every stadium and city official he could keep within earshot. “There are thousands of refunds! Even with three days we lose that revenue. INXS is exhausted. It’s the tail end of the tour—they have one day to rest for Syracuse.”
The Mayor’s official of business development was apologetic. “We goofed,” he said.
“Your goof,” the tour representative said, “is fucking costing millions of dollars. We’re going to sue this ugly fucking smelly city’s ass off.”
Angus and INXS’s manager joined in on the screaming. Off on the side, Mick-O, Phillip, and I were quietly relieved. To go from 500 people at Lounge to 16,000 was enough of a jump. Syracuse’s Carrier Dome was next with 90,000 people reported to have bought tickets! The extra performances in Buffalo would give me time to get used to that gut-wrenching notion. Eventually, after hours more of King Kong chest beating, the promoter’s rep gave in to the city’s take-it-or-leave-it offer of three concerts or no concert. He agreed to let us do the gigs at Memorial.
From nine to eleven, the three of us did an interview with a newspaper arts section and two local rock stations. Mick-O was so jet-lagged and/or sexed out that he fell asleep on one of the station couches. Phillip was animated, I’ll give him that. Angus said maybe we should rethink strategy and have Phillip do the interviews solo—with me as the backup for college stations. This didn’t worry me. Phillip loved being the center of attention, and Angus was probably right. Mick-O’s punctuality was not to be trusted, and I do have a somewhat monotone voice.
Our first soundcheck at Memorial would be ready at four o’clock; we had five hours to kill. To get us out of his hair, Angus arranged for a limo to take us over to Niagara Falls while he sorted everything through. “Don’t go to the Canadian side of the Falls. I’m not sure about your visa situation.”
We waited in the Hyatt lobby. Mick-O copped a stare from the doorman because he was blasting “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” on the gift-basket kazoo. An old-time driver with a gray face, like a dying fish, held up a sign for Phillip Harvey. Mick-O hopped in the front, like he was in a taxi in Melbourne. Ted, the driver, talked mostly to Mick-O, but his words boomed off corners and hit you in the face.
“What do you think of Buffalo, Mr. Mick-O? She’s a pretty Victorian city, don’t you think?”
Mick-O made the mistake of telling Ted that Melbourne’s in the State of Victoria, and Windbag was off on a new topic.
“That’s right, it is, too. Been to Sydney. I had a pretty fair night there when I was on leave. They make the girls big there. Couple of hookers I couldn’t get my arms around.” He had a husky cigarette laugh like my Uncle Jack.
“Could be the sun or the Vegemite,” Mick-O said. “That’ll make ’em grow.”
“You think Prince or Springsteen would press a button to shut them out?” Phillip leaned over and whispered.
“Yeah,” I grinned. “But we can’t. Not yet.”
As we neared the Falls, I asked Ted which section has the best view.
“Pity I can’t drive you to the Canuck side. Orders from my boss. It’s nicer. I’ll tell you though, right here in the U.S. of A. there’s a perfect spot which is practically under the Falls.”
“Bewdy,” Mick-O said.
You could hear the water roar as soon as we got out of the car. At the edge, my balls ached from the sheer drop.
Aunty Grace used to call an open drain near my house Niagara Falls. She didn’t want me and Liam playing near it because she’d heard it was contaminated. She thought we might drink from it. When it was dark, Aunty Grace would call us inside for tea, make us swear on our grandmother’s bible we hadn’t disobeyed her. Aunty Grace knew I loved her meatloaf, which she made with a hard-boiled egg in the middle. Mum’s specialties were veal and mushrooms, and chicken grilled with orange rind. Occasionally, Mum made rabbit stew, which was my Dad’s favorite. Aunty Grace, the two families agreed, made the better afters—homemade vanilla ice cream from Carnation milk, to be served with hot baked apricot slices. Most more-ish of all were Aunty Grace’s lamingtons—chocolate and raspberry layers with coconut topping.
Phillip hated our sidetrip. He felt like a school kid sent out for recess. He wanted to go back and rehearse in his room. But Mick-O insisted that we buy tickets for the boat ride. Before boarding the Maid of the Mist, a tour girl showed the passengers how to snap on our “pond-chose.”
As the boat ride began, Mick-O blew his kazoo again. You couldn’t hear a thing, but Phillip took advantage of this vulnerable moment to snatch it and throw it into the water.
“Hey!” Mick-O said.
“March 29, 1848,” the loudspeaker said, “was the one night the town of Niagara was strangely silent. Ice had formed a dam, leaving the Falls dry. Two days later the dam broke.”