Mercy had been very clear she didn’t want him contacting her.
Clean break. Easier for everyone.
Walk away with sweet memories, no bitterness.
This is exactly why we need to—
No, I won’t get into this with you.
I can’t believe you’re trying this, Will. There’s no such thing as access rights to your ex-girlfriend’s kids.
Clean. Break.
Move. The. Fuck. On.
Which was fine. Easy. Every time he was tempted to call or message her he simply shoved his tongue as hard as he could against the screaming raw nerves around his rotting tooth and every thought he’d ever had was obliterated. If this went on long enough his brain might automatically make the connection between her name and agonising, most likely pus-filled infection sites, which would be helpful in curbing his tendency to mope and crawl and plead after a break-up.
On the other hand, he might die of blood poisoning. Which would also prevent moping etc. Win-win.
Whether because of imminent blood poisoning, mopiness or his usual general dumb-fuckery, he managed to stuff up his flight schedule, left himself only twenty minutes to make the connection in Brisbane, which, since the flight was delayed by an hour out of Mackay, was a big fucking problem. Of course there were no more flights to Sydney that night. Of course. The airline desk attendant was sweet and seemed genuinely sorry for him. If he’d tried he probably could have swung an invitation into the airline lounge. He couldn’t remember how, though. To try. He spent the night at Brisbane Airport’s gate 41, the discomfort of the row of plastic seats he attempted to lie on distracting him for whole minutes at a time from the pain in his mouth.
When the airport pharmacy opened at 7 a.m. he tried to buy some codeine, was reminded he needed a prescription and had to settle for Panadol. He swallowed a double dose as soon as he got on the plane, and another two halfway through the flight. The box told him the contents could be toxic if you exceeded the recommended dose, but at least if he ended up in hospital with paracetamol poisoning he might get some decent pain meds.
By the time he’d boarded the Sydney airport train he concluded he’d been sold a placebo. The pain was immense and he couldn’t resist sticking a finger in there every so often to try to press the throbbing down. An old lady across the aisle made a point of muttering under her breath each time and he genuinely felt bad about grossing her out, but it was that painful he couldn’t help himself.
As a distraction he flicked through the photos Lena had sent. He focused in hard, zooming and dragging multiple times on each, feeling a tickle of satisfaction when he managed to recognise a chair or toy or framed picture in among the visual noise. He was reminded of the window of Kerrie’s Gifts back in Mackay. From across the street it was a jungle scene, but painted in gold and blue and pink and yellow instead of shades of green. Up close, you began to see where one object ended and another began and then, with concentration, you could make out what some of those objects were: garish Venetian-style masks hung off teddy bears which sat on side tables which were perched over ceramic dolls which were nestled next to wooden crucifixes and glass vases and lamps and some of all that half draped in scarves and tablecloths, and in any tiny gaps glimpses of the shop beyond, shelves and shelves of more of the same.
Except in Lena’s photos, only a third or so of the stuff was identifiable, even when he zoomed right in. A lot of the space was taken up by bags—garbage bags and canvas shopping totes and a few of those plastic-hessian stripy things you saw homeless men dragging around at Roma Street station. He hoped the bags were Lena’s work and that they would all be gone by the time he arrived, but he knew that was unlikely. Most of them were wedged tightly against other bags, against furniture or stacks of paper. They were storage, not garbage. But storage for what? Clothes, probably, but also things with sharp angles that poked through the sides, small appliances and boxes and … and … what? He racked his brain.
Will owned exactly the amount of stuff that fit into the backpack at his feet. He knew he was an extreme case, but still. He went through Mercy’s house, mentally opened all the cupboard doors, scanned the shelves. More pots and pans and plates and glasses than they ever used in the kitchen. Board games they never played in the hall cupboard, a drawer full of tangled cords and cables that had never been needed but seemed like they might one day. Mercy and the kids had more clothes than they wore, but no more than fit in the wardrobes. What else was there? What did people have? Books, maybe? Like, what do you call them—ornaments?
The old woman across from him muttered disgusting and he dropped his spit-covered hand in his lap. ‘Sorry,’ he said, because he was. ‘Toothache.’
‘Have you seen a dentist?’ She sounded like his mum. Exasperated at having to ask such an obvious question.
‘Yeah, nah. Bit broke, you know.’
The woman closed her eyes, sighed. He was in for a real lecture now. ‘You got a Medicare card?’ In a tone that suggested she expected him to say no, because that’s how evidently incompetent at adulthood he was.
‘Yeah. Dentists don’t take—’
‘Go to a doctor, love. Bulk billing. Not a dentist but better than shoving your filthy paws in there making it worse.’
He tried to smile, but it hurt quite a bit. ‘Yeah, good idea.’
She muttered something about common sense, went back to squinting disapprovingly around the carriage, looking for someone else to shame into taking basic, obvious action to sort out their shit.
At the Railway Square walk-in medical centre the receptionist said the wait might be an hour. He settled into an uncomfortably soft chair and scrolled through his social media feeds, then on to the news app, where he found himself looking into the face of a fifty-thousand-year-old wolf pup uncovered after massive permafrost melts in Canada. Another day in which the Sydney skyline is invisible, thanks to unprecedented levels of bushfire smoke blanketing the city, said the breakfast program playing on the TV over his head.
Twenty-four hours ago he’d been in a Mackay pub tasting locally produced catastrophic bushfire smoke with every spoonful of beans, and though he’d travelled almost two thousand kilometres by bus, two planes and a train, the background commentary as he held in his palm a recent photo of an animal last seen in the Ice Age was still of locally produced catastrophic bushfire smoke. Was this what vertigo felt like? Or was it simple dread, this sense of plummeting and spinning at the same time, with no surety you will ever land?
It wasn’t just this story, this pup. All over the world things meant to stay buried were being uncovered because people had forgotten they were part of the world even as they couldn’t stop devouring it. In Russia, a long-frozen reindeer carcass suddenly thawed and the nineteenth-century anthrax that had killed it took the opportunity to infect a twenty-first-century child and not a single flight was cancelled, not a single carbon-spewing factory closed.
Last year a Czech river revealed centuries-old low water marks made on stones. One said, If you see me, weep. Nobody did, though, far as Will could tell. They tweeted it, reposted it, reported it in the last minute of the TV news, letting the credits roll over the footage of the rock, so dry it was hard to believe water had ever touched it. The etched warning didn’t look frightening at all if you couldn’t read Czech. It could have said anything. It could have said, Everything is fine. Carry on exactly as you are. Everyone, including Will, acted as though it did.
At the ninety-minute mark he approached the desk, waited for the receptionist to stop typing and look at him. When she didn’t he cleared his throat, asked if it’d be much longer. The woman sighed loudly, demanded his name, rolled her chair over to a different monitor, sighed again. ‘There are three people ahead of you,’ she said.
‘It’s just I’ve already been waiting for—’
‘The people ahead of you have been waiting longer.’ She slid back to her original position, recommenced typing.
He sat back down, ashamed. Nobody else had stood to question the waiting time. Nobody else thought they deserved special treatment.
At the two-hour mark he caved, washed down two more Panadol with water from the cooler next to the front door. The white cardboard cups were so tiny he needed to refill and tip the contents into his mouth five times before the tablets went down all the way, and still his throat felt bruised from the effort. He was going in for a sixth refill when his name was called. He dropped the cup, fumbled to pick it up as the doctor repeated his name. ‘Here,’ he called, sounding like an idiot kid in class. Couldn’t see anywhere to put the cup, scrunched it in his hand and tried to keep up with the bald, skinny doctor race-walking down the corridor.
Before Will had managed to sit, the doctor was asking what the problem was.
‘Um, I’ve got this toothache …’
‘Seen a dentist?’ The doctor was as absorbed in his screen as the receptionist had been in hers.
‘Nah, um, that’s the thing, why I’m—I can’t afford to yet but I thought maybe you could, um, in the meantime, something for the pain.’
The doctor pushed back from his desk, swivelled in his chair to face Will with widespread legs, elbows on his knees, gaze steady. ‘Something for the pain?’
‘Yeah. It’s, um, pretty bad. Keeping me up and that. I hoped you could—’
‘Tried Panadol?’
‘Yeah, that’s what I’m taking now. I had some codeine—’
‘You have codeine?’
‘I had some left over but it’s gone so I—’
‘Left over from what?’
Will’s face flashed with heat. He knew from Mercy and her pharmacist mates that asking directly for the strong stuff was a red flag. So was acting nervous or on edge. Like, say, dropping a cup of water, scrunching and un-scrunching a bit of rubbish in your hand and turning red when questioned. He focused on breathing slowly, relaxing his shoulders.
‘My girlfriend had them left over from something. I haven’t been prescribed anything.’
The doctor kept watching his face. Didn’t move.
Don’t babble. Don’t fidget. You haven’t done anything wrong. ‘The pain is sort of here.’ Will cupped his cheek. ‘It’s been a week or so, getting steadily worse.’
‘But you haven’t seen a dentist?’
‘No, like I said, I don’t have the money right now. I’ve just, um—’ Stop! ‘I was retrenched last week and my financial situation is …’
The doctor flicked his eyes at the computer screen. ‘You’re a long way from home.’
‘Oh, yeah, um. I’m staying with family here.’
The doctor looked pointedly at the stuffed backpack at Will’s feet. Will was immediately aware of his faded board shorts, threadbare t-shirt, greasy ponytail and five days of stubble. Knew the shadows under his eyes must show the nights of disturbed and shallow sleep. He felt tears coming, sucked in a few fast breaths to clear them away.
‘I will be staying with family. On my way there now. After this. Just arrived this morning from Queensland. Long trip, you know. Overnight as it happened, because of flight delays and, um, travelling’s tiring, yeah, but I’m on my way to my, um, aunty’s place now. She’s in Leichhardt and I didn’t know if there’s, like, ah, a bulk-billing place there anymore, so I thought I better, you know, while I’m in the city still, find somewhere to get some, um—’ Stop it! Deep breath. ‘To get this sorted.’ He cupped his cheek again.
‘Let’s see then.’ The doctor snapped on a pair of gloves, rolled forward, shone a torch inside Will’s gaping mouth, prodded at the pain with surprisingly gentle fingers, rolled away, discarded his gloves, began typing.
‘Any allergies?’
‘Nah.’
‘There’s some indication of infection. I’m prescribing you an antibiotic to help with that. If the pain continues, though, you will need to see a dentist to sort out the underlying cause.’
‘Right, thanks.’ Don’t ask for pain meds. Don’t ask for pain meds.
The doctor handed him the prescription. ‘Anything else?’
‘No, um, yeah, it’s just the pain is—’
‘I understand you have some pain. The problem, Will, is that you’ve never attended this practice before. Your home address is in another state. I don’t know your medical history, have no way of knowing how many prescriptions you’ve already collected or how much codeine or whatever else you may have hoarded. And in any case, the level of inflammation does not lead me to think prescription pain relief is necessary. Over-the-counter should be sufficient to tough it out.’
Fucking hot face, fucking goddamn prickle of tears. He couldn’t speak and didn’t know what he’d say if he could. He nodded, left the doctor’s office with the prescription in one hand and the scrunched-up cup in the other.
At the pharmacy counter he swallowed his last trickle of pride and asked how much the prescription would cost. Twelve bucks. There was fifteen, maybe, left in his account and he still needed to get to Leichhardt. If he skipped the antibiotics he could buy three packs of off-brand ibuprofen for nine dollars and then he’d definitely have enough left for the bus fare. Probably.
‘Mr Harris?’ The pharmacist was tapping the counter. He was aware of the line forming behind him.
He nodded, let the woman take the script away to prepare. There’d be painkillers of some sort at Aunty Nic’s. Maybe even some good stuff. Could be Aunty Nic had a hoard of the kind the prick of a doctor was referring to. A whole pile of opioids or narcotics ready to tumble out of some high, forgotten cupboard Lena hadn’t cleared out yet.
Boarding the bus at Railway Square his adrenaline surged. When he asked the driver the fare to Norton Street, the man rolled his eyes, pointed at a machine further down the aisle. Told him to tap. Again, there was a line forming behind him and he felt the collective impatience at his taking a whole goddamn five seconds to ask a question needling his spine.
There was a time he wouldn’t have thought twice about boarding a bus without the fare. On the rare occasions an inspector boarded you’d duck, get off at the next stop, no worries. Different once you were a grown man, couldn’t easily slither through the packed aisle, jump over shopping bags and dodge prams, slip out the back door before the inspector made his way to you. Different when you had a record, and no idea which of the tiny infractions so-called civilised society might accuse you of would be overlooked, which a cause to drag you back to court.
Anyway, he tapped his debit card on the machine like he saw others doing and it chirped in the same way it had for the people in front of him which probably meant he was okay.
While he’d been waiting at the medical centre he’d worked out that keeping his mouth slightly open helped. He felt like a creep sitting there gaping, but figured it was better than poking himself in the gums every few minutes. Probably. The view out the window onto Parramatta Road might have made him gape anyway. He’d been away less than seven years but everything had changed. Empty shopfronts and graffiti-covered building sites where there used to be bridal shops and bakeries, towers of apartments where there used to be delis and 1940s terraces. A low-rise unit block they’d lived in for a few years when he was at primary school was now a pole dancing studio, the building they moved to after that was gone altogether, a block of dirt and rubble protected by a chain-wire fence and signs warning trespassers there were attack dogs on site.
On Norton Street, the Coles where he and his mates stole Mars Bars and batteries and condoms was still there, but on either side nail salons and massage shops had replaced the Italian cafes and delis. The primary school looked the same as it had when they’d jump the fence at night to lie on the grass, which was softer and cleaner than the grass anywhere else in the suburb. Looked the same but there’d be an alarm system now, for sure, maybe security guards. Boys like they’d been would have to find somewhere else to watch the stars and smoke and talk shit. Were there still boys like that here? It seemed unlikely what with all the Pilates studios and artisan bread shops.
Walking from the bus stop through the back streets of the suburb was like walking back in time, though (except for the top-of-the-range cars parked in front of every second driveway, Stop WestConnex signs on every third lawn, construction racket from every fourth or fifth house). But lilly pilly hedges and redbrick walls still outnumbered security fences, and jacarandas and silky wisteria still dripped onto the footpaths. Still the waft of garlic and roasting tomatoes, the roar of planes overhead. Houses he’d been inside once or twice or dozens of times, yards where he’d smoked his first cigarette, drunk his first bourbon, had his first—first ten or twenty, probably—kisses.
In one street, he passed two houses of now-dead school mates and the turn-off for the street of another. One car crash, one accidental OD and one on purpose. All in this neighbourhood, all before they were sixteen or seventeen. Thanks to the shit show of prison followed by years at a FIFO site that attracted the desperate and reckless he knew other dead young men, too many to say off the top of his head. He’d have to actually run through their names and count, and he wouldn’t be doing that, thanks very much.
But these three he knew without thinking, without remembering. They were there same as Dad, too much alive in this place to ever not be here. Macca, jug ears and a stinking mutt of a dog always at his heels (though not in the car when it melded finally with the telegraph pole). Stokes, short but with a Hollywood smile that made every girl ready to kick off her undies and every bloke keen to smash his teeth into his throat. No one did, though, because he was always up to his not-real-high neck in both pussy and pills, and happy to pass on his extras to the other fellas. Forgot he had to take the children’s dose, they all joked at his funeral. Sam had been laughing the loudest. Held a deflating beach ball he’d found melting into the ground somewhere, said, Hey, look, I’m Stokes with an eccy.
Sam downed his entire prescription three weeks later. What the prescription was Will didn’t know. People just said it like that—took the lot, whole prescription—as though you were meant to know.
Prescription. Fuck. He stopped in the middle of the footpath, slapped his loose short pockets as if the packet could have somehow made its way in there without him knowing, unzipped the backpack and ferreted around with both hands even though he knew he had not opened the damn thing since the airport. When had he last held the pharmacy bag? Boarding the bus it had been in his right hand. He’d balanced it on top of the backpack while he fumbled his debit card out of his wallet with the whole hostile line bristling behind him. Balanced it there and then tapped his card and, still holding the card and his wallet in one hand and the backpack with the other, clomped down the aisle to an empty seat. He’d dropped the backpack while he put the card in the wallet and the wallet in his pocket, and then?
Someone would find it later today, he guessed, skidding out from under the seats as the bus took a corner. Check if there was anything good inside before chucking it in the bin or dropping it back on the floor, stomping it flat for the hell of it.
At the corner of Aunty Nic’s street it occurred to him that spending twenty-four hours travelling while grieving several relationships, panicking about the future and nursing a terrible toothache was pretty dumb. Doing all that in order to revisit the city where he watched his dad die and where his last known address was a state prison was completely fucking stupid.
But then there was the reason he came. Lena. Seeing her would slow his plummet, maybe even reverse its course. For all the shit memories he had of Sydney, he also had plenty of good ones, and most of them featured his sister. Not her alone; the four of them. As a family they were the kind of happy you didn’t realise was rare until it ended and you got a taste of what life was like for most people, most of the time. They were an ordinary, squabbling over the TV, struggling to pay the bills, annoying the shit out of each other at the dinner table, really, really, really fucking happy family. They loved each other and a lot of the time liked each other as well. It was a miracle unnoted until it was over.
He could never get that back, obviously. But maybe something new and almost as good, now he and Lena were free, independent adults. No Mum hovering anxiously, no Rick the Dick forcing himself into their space, pretending to get their decades-old family jokes. Just the two of them against the world. It could be great. A fresh start. Exactly what he needed.