5

EARTH’S CRUST varies in thickness, thinner under oceans and thicker under the continents. The inner core and the crust are solid. The outer core and mantle layers are plastic and semi-fluid. The crust extends from the surface down 40 km, and the upper mantle from 40 km to 400 km. There is a transition region, 400–650 km, before the lower mantle, which is 650–2700 km. The “D” layer, 2700–2890 km, surrounds the outer core, which is 2890–5150 km. The depth of the inner core is 5150–6378 km.

Each of the seven layers has distinct chemical and seismic properties.

Andrea wasn’t home. She had promised to take him to a movie, but she had been gone all day. Winston was at his office, and Helen went to the supermarket before having a cappuccino with two old school friends. When she came in, she had the car to unpack, groceries to put away, and she was short with words.

“Eddie wasn’t suitable,” she said, stacking the frozen foods.

“He was. He knew everything about gardens. You tell me one thing he did that wasn’t right.”

“Don’t argue, Jeffrey. I get enough of that from your sister. It was your father’s decision, and he decided Mr Sorensen was more experienced.”

“Experienced how?”

“He does landscape gardening. He’s a professional. Will you stop sulking and take these through to the laundry?”

He carried two packets of laundry powder to the back of the house and stowed them in the laundry cupboard. Through the glass-panelled door he could see the cactus garden and a corner of the pool. He walked back to the kitchen, nineteen steps instead of the usual twenty-one. “Dad hated Eddie and it wasn’t Eddie’s fault.”

His mother didn’t look at him. “Nonsense,” she said.

“It’s true. Dad’s homophobic.”

Helen closed the fridge door. “Jeffrey! That’s disgusting! Where do you get language like that? Would you be happy if I told your father what you just said?”

“You can! I don’t care.”

“Stop! Not one more word!” She put some apples into the bowl on the counter. “I don’t like your tone. You can go to your room.”

“I can’t. I’ve got cricket.” Anger made him strong. He took an apple from the bowl, and bit into it hard, imagining that he had titanium teeth slicing through a cricket ball.

“No cricket!”

“Mum, I have to go to cricket. Mr Ingles said!”

“I will phone Mr Ingles and tell him you’re gated,” Helen said. “This is a family matter and more important than boys batting a ball around a playing field.”

His anger increased, flaring into his hands, making them want to smash things, throw stuff across the room. He curled his fingers into fists and thrust them in his pockets. “We don’t bat a ball around a field! This is cricket! If you came and watched some of our games, you’d know something about it.”

“Jeffrey, one more word and you’re gated next Saturday as well. I’m not telling you again. Go to your room.” She pointed with a straight arm and finger that looked so ridiculous, he would have laughed if he hadn’t been upset.

He went because there was nowhere else to go, and lay face down on the bed, his breath hot on the pillow. Why wasn’t Andrea here? She had promised. The movies didn’t matter. He could watch a film any time, anywhere. It was what she said about them sticking together. We are all we’ve got, she’d once told him. Was that only true for the moment of the saying?

His breathing became slower and the anger subsided into a feeling of helplessness and sadness. Eddie had gone. He rolled over onto his back and somewhere between himself and the ceiling, saw a picture of the gardener lifting that green beetle out of the swimming pool. It was such a clear memory, Eddie’s smooth brown fingers cupped under the little thing, taking it to the cactus garden, and then tilting it so that it slid onto a dry flat stone, its legs waving. He’d turned it over. The green shell on its back separated like elevator doors and two little wings came out to carry it away to some place it knew to be home. Jeff blinked. The other memory was his father large in his dark office suit, shouting across the yard as he walked towards the gardener. Jeff had run into the house, leaving Eddie with Winston, and something had happened to make it Eddie’s last day in the garden. What had his father said to Eddie? Was this what the woman had meant by change? He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The old lady, Maisie or whatever her name was, had told him there would be big changes, and he had felt something in him respond to that, something like an electric shock in his body.

It was hard to know what was real with that old lady. Most of the time, she seemed to be wandering around some dark maze in her brain, where sentences deconstructed and then glued together again in random ways. Helen’s great-aunt was like that. She stared at you with vacant eyes and just as you got to thinking that all the rungs had fallen off her ladder, she turned on you and asked you the score of last night’s rugby test match. But Maisie was a bit different. Great-aunt Rose said mostly nonsense and some things that were real. The Maisie lady had three categories: nonsense, real, and other statements that weren’t logical but had an effect on him, like they were something he was supposed to know but had forgotten.

He wanted to talk to Andrea about the conversation in the library.

It was very important that he do that. He tried again to phone her, but of course her mobile was switched off and there was no point in leaving a message. Instead he sent her a text message: Did u no E was fired? J.

Afterwards, he realised that of course Andrea would know. She was up to date with everything that happened in the family. Besides, he didn’t want to talk about Eddie as much as about the old gum tree woman who was attaching herself to him for some reason. If he was to find out why, he needed to know more about her, and that meant separating the real from the craziness. Maybe a good way to start would be to find out more about dementia. He sat at his desk and started his computer. It had barely booted up when there was a soft knock on the door and Helen came in.

“You can go to cricket,” she said.

He swivelled in his chair. That meant she had probably phoned Mr Ingles, who had left her in no doubt that he wanted all the team at the clubhouse at one o’clock. He wanted to say, I told you so, but couldn’t risk as much as a smile. She was still angry with him.

She came into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “Jeffrey, parents are not as stupid as children believe. I know what it’s like to be your age. You don’t know what it’s like to be mine.”

He didn’t answer.

“Your father did what he thought was right, and I agreed with his decision. It was our decision to make – not yours, not the gardener’s. I want you to understand that.”

“I understand,” he said. “Is that it?”

“No.” She folded her hands in her lap. “There is something else. I need to tell you that Beckett is coming back to New Zealand next month. He’ll be in prison in Auckland. We haven’t been given the exact date of his transfer but I think we can be sure it will all be very public again – newspapers, television.”

“Aren’t you pleased he’s coming back?”

“Well, of course, we’re pleased. He’s much safer over here. But you may wish to be prepared for questions. People will know, although, thank God, not everyone will connect the name with us. There are a surprising number of Lorimers.”

He waited.

“Jeffrey, if someone asks you, you won’t be telling a lie if you say he is not a part of our family.”

“But he is! Mum, he’s my brother!”

“Sweetie, we gave Beckett every chance and he betrayed us time and time again. Your father even believed him when he claimed he was framed. That was just another lie. The cocaine wasn’t in his suitcase, it was strapped around his middle. But it started long before that, one disappointment after another. Criminal friends. Unpaid fines. Arrested for being drunk and disorderly. I believe that a family has the right to divorce an ungrateful child, so I’m saying, you won’t be telling a lie –”

Andrea’s words echoed in his head, don’t let them get to you, and then, for some odd reason, he remembered the feeling of Beck’s hand in his when he was four and scared of balloons. He stood up. “I need to go,” he said. “Mr Ingles will be waiting for the team.”

* * *

That night he told Andrea about the meeting with the woman in the library. She was sorting the clothes in her wardrobe, and she listened but in a dreamy sort of way. At one stage, she asked, “Did you feel scared?”

He thought about that. “Not really.”

“She’s a strange old thing. If you feel threatened, you should tell someone.”

“I don’t feel threatened, and I’m telling you.”

Andy rattled coathangers. “You know what I mean, Squidge. If she’s following you, you should say something to Mum or Dad.”

He felt hurt by the way she had offloaded a confidential matter and he changed the subject. “I thought we were going to a movie today.”

“And I thought you were playing cricket.”

“Not all day, Andy.”

“Some other time, eh? Sorry, Squidge, I’ve got a lot of things on my mind. Yeah, we’ll do a movie. Promise. And I’m sorry about Eddie getting the push. I know you liked him.”

He nodded.

She put her hand over his. “He’ll get another job, and it will be better than this one. I mean, how would you like to work for Dad?”

He looked up at her and his smile met the laughter in her eyes. “I wouldn’t. But I had this idea –” He looked down again. “It seemed like I was the cause somehow. Dad told me not to talk to him, and I did.”

“No, no, no.” She shook her head. “It’s not you. It’s the way Dad’s mind works. He is so ignorant. Eddie is gay. He’s not a paedophile. Don’t worry, Squidge. The sacking of Eddie has nothing to do with you.”

“I hate it when bad things happen,” he said.

She didn’t answer, but she sat beside him for more than a minute, before getting up. “Have to go,” she said. “I’ve got homework.”

But when he passed her room a few minutes later, he saw she had on her headphones and was watching music videos on her computer. She wanted to be alone.

* * *

Everyone was quiet over dinner. Helen had cooked a meal, spaghetti bolognaise, and had defrosted an apple cake with a cinnamon crust.

Jeff was the only one who said it tasted good. Winston didn’t even ask him about the cricket. Andrea pushed her plate away, food half eaten, and went to her room. It was early evening and dusk seemed to bring a great emptiness as the sun dragged the light towards the other side of the world.

Light, Maisie said. Light had meaning for him. But what meaning?

After dessert, Winston pushed back from the table, screeching the chair on the polished marble. He said to Helen, “I’m on that early flight Monday.”

“Are you coming back the same day?” she asked.

“Yes. I’ll leave the car at the airport. Excuse me.” He stood, pushed the chair back in, and went down the hall to his office.

As Helen stacked the plates, she glanced at Jeff. “Sydney,” she said.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“No. Nothing. There has been a little hold-up in the registration of the title deeds, and the quickest way to sort it is to be on the spot.”

“What’s wrong with phone and emails?”

Helen smiled. “You know your father. He likes to be hands-on, and I have no doubt that he wants to gloat over his Sydney property. I’m sure he’ll have the new house keys in his pocket before he leaves.”

Andrea came through to help with the dishes. As she stacked the plates, Helen put a hand out to stop her. “I’ll do these. Why don’t you two go into the theatre and watch one of your father’s DVDs?”

Jeff leaned towards Andrea, doing please, please, in sign language.

She laughed, nodded a yes, and they went into the theatre next to Winston’s office.

They had seen all the videos in the collection, but Jeff was allowed to choose and he pounced on Inception because it was one of his favourites – that and The Matrix. He’d already seen Inception three times and with each viewing it had revealed more to him, making the incredible credible. He loved the way people could go through layers of experience in the brain, descend one level after another and then come up again to external reality. But he seriously doubted they could do that in real life.

They had to keep the sound down because Winston was working next door. That was okay. They both knew the dialogue. They sprawled in adjacent leather chairs and Andrea put her arm over his shoulders. He rested his head against her and watched the film, her hair against his cheek. He wanted to stay that way forever.

* * *

Some days after school, Jeff went to the Argonaut Travel Agency to get a ride to the house with Helen. One of those days was Monday. The girls in the office knew him and took no notice when he found a chair and a magazine. He was a part of the place. However, the man and woman waiting next to him asked him where he was planning to travel.

“Home,” he said, and then he pointed with his thumb. “That’s my mother.”

He was proud of Helen at her work. She always looked elegant and she smiled a lot at customers, which made her eyes crinkle and shine. Behind her was a large poster of the Parthenon in Athens, white against a blue sky. He had seen it many times and knew it by its statistics, finished in 438 BC, sixty-nine and a half metres long and almost thirty-one metres wide. There were other, smaller scenes around the room: buildings less old, snow-capped mountains, white ships on blue oceans, no rain or grey skies to be seen. People said that photos did not lie, but that was not true. Photos lied all the time. Like movies, they could be mostly make-believe.

The couple in the seats next to him went to the agent near his mother. Helen was putting tickets and information in a travel wallet for the man sitting by her desk. She stood to shake his hand and then, as the man walked past Jeff and out the door, she turned off her computer.

Her smile was gone and she was Mum again, shrugging on her jacket and shaking the car keys at Jeff. He followed her out to the car park behind the building and waited while she unlocked the Audi. “Have you heard from Dad?” he asked.

“He phoned.”

He sank into the passenger seat and pushed his backpack in front of his feet. “I don’t want to live in Sydney.”

“We’re not. Who said we were?” She adjusted the rear vision mirror and backed out of the park.

He turned to face her. “Isn’t that why he went over today?”

“No. It’s something else.”

“Like what?”

“Nothing major. A small hiccup in the paperwork.” She swung the wheel and the car nosed into the traffic. “He’ll have it sorted by now.”

“When does he get back?”

“Late. We won’t wait up. We’ll get takeaways tonight and you can choose. What’s it to be – Chinese, Thai, curry? You like rogan josh, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer. When she said Thai, his thinking had flipped to Beckett coming back from Thailand and he remembered how he was supposed to tell people that his brother was not a part of their family.

Had they forgotten Beck’s laughter, all the tricks? Like the time he answered the phone, saying, “Good evening, this is the morgue,” and when he got Andy to burst a paper bag that had flour in it. How many times had their mother said, “Oh Beckett!” and flicked him with a tea towel? Had they forgotten who he was? Dad had been so proud of Beck. “My son’s getting a commerce degree,” he’d say, as though a BCom. was something extraordinary. Then Beck dropped out of uni, and the rows began, one after another.

“Let’s settle for rogan josh and mango lassi,” said Helen.

He nodded. Helen was a salesperson. She was like the posters in the Argonaut office that told lies by leaving out the truth. It’s what they needed to do to make people buy what they had to offer.

* * *

That night he looked up dementia and found that the old meaning of the word was “out of mind” – de-mentia. The most common form was Alzheimer’s, although people could get dementia at any age from brain injury, infection, strokes, loss of blood to the brain.

He went through the long list of symptoms and saw in them Helen’s Great-aunt Rose with her long wispy hair and doll-like eyes. She had memory loss, and couldn’t solve problems or do familiar tasks. She got confused about time and place and she thought the hospital was her old school. When she saw herself in a mirror, she was convinced she had a visitor. It was difficult for Great-aunt Rose to follow conversations. She kept misplacing things – like her glasses, which were on a cord around her neck but she took them off and put them in the fridge because they were a necklace from the Queen and needed to go into the bank for safe keeping. The more he read, the more he remembered the times he had visited her. He saw those pale empty eyes, the crooked lipstick, and the way her mouth trembled when she pointed at him and said, “Are you the doctor’s boy?”

He went from one article to another, but it was all about his faded relative who had once been a talented music teacher and singer. There was nothing he could connect with the Maisie woman.

The old woman who had come into his life had a different kind of craziness, and because he didn’t know what that was called, he couldn’t access information about it. Words like the names of foreign foods came up on the dementia sites – schizophrenia, paranoia, bipolar, Alzheimer’s again. They were all conditions tucked away in the brain, listed with their symptoms and their treatments. None of those were Maisie.

It was late when he put his light out. It seemed he had been asleep only minutes when he heard his father’s voice in the kitchen. He was home and they were having one of their arguments, Winston’s words rising in waves of sound, Helen’s a persistent current, pushing, pushing. He didn’t know what it was about but guessed that his father was going to make them all move to Sydney to get away from the publicity of Beckett returning to New Zealand.

A desperate thought came into his head. He didn’t mean it, but said it anyway, out loud and into the pillow. “I’d rather kill myself.”