Soon as I turned into the street I saw the stuff was gone. The teddy bears, the flowers, the cards tucked into the wire, the candles smoking in their glass jars. Disappeared.
No one knew, but I’d been adding to it. A flower or two I picked on the way home, and I tried to make sure there was always a candle burning – not one of those battery ones, but a real one. Someone had left a little glass lamp and I put new candles in and lit them, morning and night, when no one was watching.
Now all that was left was a patch of brown grass where the flowers had been lying for a week, a few crushed petals, a dead match or two.
Never knew what would be gone when I got home these days.
Kicked the gate open and wheeled the bike in. Added four pm to the list of times I hated. Getting home used to be my time with Toby, while Mum was at work and Dad in his studio.
I wondered what Dad had done all day. I was close to the house when a bang on the verandah made me jump. Hadn’t noticed a guy crouching below the gizmo, holding some kind of tool.
‘Who are you?’ I blurted.
He jumped and turned around, spanner in the air. ‘Man, you startled me. I’m Tom.’
Like that was meant to mean something. He was younger than I’d first thought – not much older than me. I kept staring.
‘I’m doing some repairs,’ he added. ‘Your – dad, is it? – wants some things fixed up before the sale. Hey, give me a hand to lift this thing off the wall?’
‘Isn’t Dad here?’
He shook his head. ‘He and the other guy have gone out.’
Dropped the bike on the grass, clomped up the three steps to the verandah and went over next to him in front of the smashed metalwork hanging from the splintered weatherboards. Tom had tidied it up, unscrewed it and spread a paint-covered sheet below to catch it.
‘Take it there and there.’ He gestured. When my hands were gripping the thing, he took hold and nodded at me to lift. It came away from the wall, trailing wires and screws, and we crouched and laid it on the sheet.
‘Thanks,’ he said, bending over it with the spanner. ‘I’ll be right now.’
Stood up, backed away. Walked past his bent back and into the kitchen. Wondered where Dad and Edmund had gone. Ate a huge bowl of cereal overflowing with milk as if it would give me the answers. It didn’t.
I vibed him to go and it worked. He knocked on the door ten minutes later.
‘Tell your dad I’ll be back first thing in the morning with the timber. I reckon I can knock it over tomorrow.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Before the sale.’
‘I dunno. That’s my mum’s side of things. I’m just the grunt.’ He brushed his hands on his overalls and looked at me through the screen. ‘Sorry about your brother, mate.’
That took me by surprise. I’d never met the guy. Did every person in town know what had happened? This handyman – Tom – said it without looking weird or embarrassed or anything.
‘Yeah.’ I did a stupid kind of nod. ‘Um. Thanks.’
‘See ya.’ He turned on his heel and was stomping down the steps before I could answer. He headed across the grass, head up, like he didn’t care about a thing. Not much older than me, but out of school, doing his own thing.
I went outside. The thing was gone. I couldn’t see what he’d done with it. There was just a smashed, splintery hole in the wall. There was no chain on the pool gate and no one else home.
First time I’d been in the house by myself.
I went to the gate and swung it open. The pool cleaner was plugged in, chugging around the bottom of the pool, sucking up all the dead leaves blown in over the past week. I stared into the water like it might have answers. It wouldn’t have happened while I was at home. I’d never have forgotten Toby long enough for him to get into the pool area, fall into the pool and drown.
Dad’s car pulled up out on the street and I bolted. I was sitting at the kitchen table like nothing was wrong by the time he came up the steps.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘I just took Eddie to the airport. How’d you go today?’
‘Didn’t know we were selling the house.’
He stopped dead for a moment then sighed. Went over to the kettle and lifted it. That thing wasn’t for boiling water any more. It was for bad moments.
‘Some guy called Tom said he can finish up the repairs in the morning in time for the sale.’
The water gushed out of the tap. He filled the kettle right to the top, a bad habit that Mum used to hassle him about. Boiling two litres of water every time he wanted a cup of tea.
He turned the kettle on. ‘Nothing’s been decided, Jarrah.’
I didn’t say anything while the kettle hissed and finally boiled in the silence. He sloshed the water into a mug, jiggled the bag, added milk. Then looked at me. ‘You can’t honestly tell me you want to stay in this house.’
I shrugged. ‘Where would we go?’
‘Where we belong, of course,’ he said. ‘We need family and friends, Jarr, at a time like this.’
It sounded like a line he’d rehearsed. But I got it. I got why he’d want to be with his brother and sisters. I was an only child again. I had cousins in Tasmania and they were OK, but they weren’t brothers. Toby was the person I’d been closest to in the world. If I had a brother, I’d want to be with him.
‘I don’t want to put more pressure on your mother,’ Dad said. ‘I’m just looking at all the options, working out what we can do, how we can get home as easily as possible. It’ll be all right.’
It wouldn’t. Moving was never going to make it all right. And the last place I wanted to go was back to Tasmania.
‘I’ll talk to your mother when she gets home. Can you keep it quiet until then?’
‘Whatever.’ That wasn’t something I was allowed to say to my parents, before. I got up. ‘I’ve got homework.’
‘Give me a hug.’
I didn’t want to. It wasn’t like our family didn’t hug – we did – and Dad was famous for being a bonecrusher. That was the problem. I didn’t think I could handle one of his hugs. But his chin was trembling and I couldn’t stand that either. I clenched my teeth and stepped into his hug. I stepped back as soon as I could, scooped up my schoolbag and headed upstairs. Shut the door and flopped down on my bed.
Dad had family in Tassie, and I had Oliver Neumann.
The worst thing was, our parents were friends. It’d been bad enough to face him at school, where he was a couple of years ahead of me, but then we’d go to the Neumanns’ for Sunday barbecues. Toby was still little then, and after lunch he’d fall asleep in his car capsule and we’d be waved off to ‘play’ in Oliver Neumann’s bedroom as the olds opened another bottle of wine.
‘Don’t fucking come near me, you pervert,’ he’d say, and get on the computer. I’d sit in the chair across the room at an impossible angle from the screen while he surfed, stopping when he found something to hassle me about.
‘Ever touch me and I’ll fucking kill you,’ he said often enough.
What was it about me? I didn’t want to touch him. I’d never have thought of it if he hadn’t gone on and on. I’d spend hours perched on the edge of his chair by the desk, praying he’d find something to watch and forget about me.
‘Check this out, perv,’ he said one time. ‘Stupid parents have no idea how to block stuff.’
The image that came up was three naked men. It took me a moment to understand what was happening and where their penises were and I felt sick.
‘Like that, don’t you, faggot?’
‘It’s gross.’ I turned away from the screen, but not before I saw the bulge in his shorts.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he snapped. ‘Like you want it in your fucking mouth.’
That time I did something. I walked across the room, opened the door and let myself out.
‘Don’t think you can run away from it, Jarrah,’ he yelled after me. ‘Doesn’t matter how fast you are.’
I was down the hall before he could follow, and downstairs. The olds were still laughing in the living area. I found a big built-in cupboard down there, in the laundry, and wedged myself into it. It smelled of clean sheets, and I shut my eyes and tried to get rid of the picture of those men. I stayed there for two hours, until it was time to go home and I could sneak out.
It didn’t work. I still remembered it. I still remembered the look on Oliver Neumann’s face as he laughed at me. The main thing I’d achieved since we came to Murwillumbah was avoiding seeing that look on anyone’s face.
Tasmania. Home, Dad called it.