With each new structural addition over the years, the Rosewood Hotel has sunk deeper into the marshy grounds beneath. Bottle shop, bistro, beer garden, function room, all Legoed haphazardly around a public bar that refuses to either budge or evolve. The latest tack-on, a sprawling gaming room screaming with light and sound, is actually bigger than the sum of all the other parts, a twenty-four-hour dispenser of hope to the overlooked and depressed.
It’s here that Harvey sits waiting for his sister, distractedly pressing dollar coins into a game themed around ancient Egypt, possibly the Roman Empire. The occasional penguin motif confuses things. He wants to feel incredulous that his mother failed to tell him she’d moved house but his heart isn’t in it. Lynn stopped apologising for her actions (and inaction) years ago, and somehow everyone has blithely accepted this permanent state of absolution.
No, his present anxiety is pointed towards Cate, who still hasn’t called him back.
He decides to phone Suze, never a flippant course of action and especially so in light of Cate’s version of events and her chosen place of refuge. He is confident Cate has not exaggerated Suze’s rage—the woman has a hell of a temper when the plastic film is pierced—but he also regards his ex-wife as a decent mother. A very good mother, if a little prone to martyrdom.
‘Harvey,’ she answers after the requisite four rings to gather her thoughts. ‘I suppose you’ve heard from Cate. You know she’s at your place?’
‘Yes, I got a message. She hasn’t called me back. I told her where the spare key is.’
‘She’s out of control, Harvey,’ Suze says at a pitch that flags she won’t be taking a breath anytime soon. ‘She completely fucked up her exams and didn’t get into anything. Not a thing. I didn’t even know that was possible. She hasn’t got a fallback. But the thing is—she’s been lying about studying. She goes up there and she’s just been pretending, like I’m fucking stupid or something. Which I am! I’m stupid, Harvey, because I thought she was going okay. Stupid Mum. Stupid dumb Mum who pays the bills and does the washing and makes all the food and packs the lunches and drives her everywhere and … are you at a casino?’
Harvey politely waves away a young waitress handing around free glasses of something bubbly to the parched patrons.
‘No,’ he says, ‘a pub in Shorton. I’m waiting for Naomi to pick me up. Mum’s moved into her place and … anyway, I’m happy for Cate to stay at my place if you think she’ll be okay there. It’s pretty safe and it’s handy to everything.’
‘And so we just condone running away? Is that what we do, Harvey?’ Suze says as Beam tries to wave the waitress back. ‘We just send the message that when the going gets tough, she can play us off each other like, like, I don’t know … some sports analogy, fucking whatever.’
Harvey smiles in spite of himself. This is the Suze he likes best, flailing and uncertain.
‘Suze, it’ll be okay. She just needs to blow off some steam. She’s embarrassed. She knows you’re right. Let her calm down for a few days. I’ll be home soon.’
‘Soon? How’s your father?’
‘I haven’t seen him yet.’
‘Well.’
‘Well, I hope that goes okay.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Okay. Can you text me when you hear from Cate?’
‘I will. Gotta go. Naomi’s here.’
And there she is, Beam’s youngest sister, whirling manically across the gaming room floor, more animated, if it’s possible, than the bleating rows of heat-seeking poker machines. Beautiful in the tidy, cropped manner of the effortlessly petite, ungiven to long lunches and ponderous vacations, Naomi is both a picture of restraint and impossible to restrain.
‘Pencil!’ his sister yells across the gaming room (it’s her primary school spin on his initials and Harvey’s always quietly loved it). Naomi seems happy and irritated and impatient all at once, none of which surprises Beam.
‘Took you long enough to get here,’ she says, then woompa! The full force of a Naomi hug, every emotion open for business.
‘Kids are in the car,’ she says. ‘Like the bloody casino, ha! Let’s go.’
Beam follows her out to the parking lot where Naomi has commandeered a handicapped bay.
‘Don’t judge,’ she says before Harvey can mouth a word. ‘We’ve all got our special issues. Mine is parenting these buggers.’
These buggers are the three boys now arranged haphazardly in the back seat. Toby, Finn and Jamie. Beam has no idea what ages they’ve reached, but he mentally high-fives himself for the full name recall. Toby looks as though he might be in early high school, the kid’s furious acne instantly reminding Beam of his two most hellish years at Shorton High.
‘I’m sorry we forgot to tell you about Mum’s move,’ Naomi says, checking her mobile phone and reversing the car at the same time. Beam isn’t sure who she means by ‘we’. It could be Naomi and their mother, or Penny might be thrown in too, or even Bryan. It could be all of Shorton for all Beam understands about the current military deployment.
‘No worries,’ he says. ‘I just felt a bit stupid rocking up to someone else’s house. Lucky no-one opened the door.’
‘Yeah,’ says Naomi, nudging the car’s nose into a tiny traffic gap that inspires a flurry of wild arm thrashing in the rear-vision mirror. ‘Well, she had to move because of the stairs. She fell down those stairs one night and nearly died.’
Beam automatically adjusts ‘nearly died’ to ‘had an accident’. Naomi only ever speaks of full-scale drama.
‘The doctor said it was the worst case of concussion he’d ever seen and could have led to long-term brain damage,’ Naomi continues. ‘It was just lucky she landed on Boner. I just said, you’re out of there, Mum. Come and live with us. We’ve got a spare room. There’s no need to be all on her own at her age. That’s what trans-generational living is all about.’
Beam grips the door handle. Naomi drives as though manoeuvred by cosmic malevolent forces.
‘Trans-generational living,’ he says. ‘Is that a thing?’
‘Penny says it’s a huge overreaction,’ Naomi goes on.
Beam wonders when he’ll get a chance to turn around and say a proper hi to the kids.
‘She says I’ve made Mum feel far more old and vulnerable than she needs to, that I’ve just made a problem where there wasn’t one. But she nearly died, Pencil. I don’t think that’s something you can overreact to, do you?’
‘No, death is pretty serious,’ he says.
‘I think she’s just jealous that Mum is at our place now and not hers. I mean, I think that’s where she’s actually coming from. Whether or not she can admit that to herself, I don’t know.’
Harvey glances briefly at the empty cow paddocks flying past. What is Boner?
‘We’re not even speaking at the moment,’ Naomi says, now reaching for something in the glove box that opens with an abrupt thwack on Harvey’s knees. ‘At all. So it’s a bit awkward—sorry about that. But I’m not going to apologise, Pencil. I haven’t done anything wrong bar care about Mum. And you know Penny won’t apologise. As if. So you know … it just is what it is.’
At a red light that can’t present itself too soon, Beam turns around and smiles at the kids, who seem completely tuned out to this possibly familiar rant. Apart from Toby, who seems vaguely interested and angrily disinterested at the same time.
‘I can’t believe you’re still fighting over our mother,’ Beam says to his sister when the car again launches into the breach. He immediately regrets articulating the observation.
‘I’m not fighting over Mum!’ Naomi yells, turning the car viciously into her street.
Shit, too far.
‘It’s nothing like that at all. God, there is so much you don’t know, so many things you haven’t seen. Penny is such a bitch to me. She’s constantly talking about me behind my back. It’s taken me a long time to work this out, and I know you think I’m not very bright but I do get there in the end, but Pencil, Penny is a poison in my bloodstream. I heard that on a show the other day and I thought, that’s exactly it. That’s what my sister is to me. Poison. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, and I can’t fix it. I’m sick of trying, Pencil. It just …’
‘It is what it is,’ he says.
‘Exactly,’ Naomi says, visibly thrilled with Harvey’s conclusion. ‘This is what happens in families where there isn’t enough love to go around in the first place.’
Wow.
Harvey suddenly realises he should have bought Naomi’s kids a present. And Penny’s kids too. He is hopelessly un-prepared for this trip, in every sense.
‘Hi guys,’ he says to the three boys as Naomi pulls up on her front verge.
‘Hi Uncle Pencil,’ says Finn, giggling. Toby mutters something indecipherable and the three boys fall over each other getting out of the hot car.
Harvey opens his door to get out too but Naomi hurriedly explains that their mother will mind the boys now while she and Harvey go straight to the hospital.
‘He doesn’t have long,’ Naomi says. I just think it’s best you see him straight away and it’s so much easier without the kids. Last visit Jamie punctured a lady’s IV bag with a Transformer. Hey, where are your bags?’
Harvey looks around as though his luggage had been here a minute ago, then he remembers.
‘Might be on the next flight or lost somewhere out the back,’ he says. ‘They’re going to send it to Mum’s. Shit. I gave them the Upton Street address.’
‘Oh well, just ring and give them mine.’
‘Or should I stay at Penny’s?’ Harvey says, thinking only now that this might be the better option. ‘Seeing as you’ve got a full house now?’
Naomi flicks on the radio. Shorton Radio. His first job in the industry.
‘Do what you like,’ she says.
Oops.
It’s a more subdued drive to the hospital and Beam can see his sister is now deep in thought about something. He suddenly feels sorry for her because she’s never been able to relax; can’t sit still long enough to enjoy anything properly. Add three young boys to the mix and you’re talking enough constant cerebral activity to power the town’s grid.
He quietly checks his messages—nothing—and turns his eyes fixedly to the road ahead.
The emotional by-product of a career spent in radio is that Beam only tends to think about two shows at a time: the one he’s doing and the next one. His anxiety span is forcibly short and therefore manageable. So now he’s thinking about the next show.
Seeing Lionel Beam.