She’s come to save the world. She’s come to cause trouble because she’s too fucking earnest and self-inflated to know the difference between caring and carelessness is exactly the size of a five-centimetre thorn lodged in your arsehole.
‘He’s sleeping,’ I say.
‘Can you wake him for me, Eli?’ she asks.
I shake my head again, turn from the door and pace slowly down the hall to Dad’s bedroom.
He’s reading Patrick White in a blue singlet and shorts, rolled cigarette in his mouth.
‘Mrs Birkbeck’s at the door,’ I say.
‘Who the fuck is Mrs Birkbeck?’ he spits.
‘She’s the school guidance counsellor,’ I say.
He rolls his eyes. He hops up from his bed, stubs his cigarette out. He hacks up a chesty tobacco spit to clear his throat, spits it into the ashtray on his bed.
‘You like her?’ he asks.
‘She means well,’ I say.
He walks up the hall to the front door.
‘Hi,’ he says. ‘Robert Bell.’
He smiles and there’s sweetness in his smile, a softness I’ve not really seen. He offers his hand for shaking and I don’t think I’ve seen him do that either, shake another person’s hand like that. I thought it was just August and me he knew how to interact with on a human level, and we usually just communicate in nods and grunts.
‘Poppy Birkbeck, Mr Bell,’ she says. ‘I’m the boys’ guidance counsellor at school.’
‘Yeah, Eli’s been telling me about all the wonderful guidance you’ve been giving to my boys,’ he says.
The lying bastard.
Mrs Birkbeck looks quietly and briefly moved. ‘They have?’ she replies, looking at me, her cheeks glowing red. ‘Well, Mr Bell, I believe your boys are very special. I believe they have great potential and I guess I consider it my job to inspire them enough to turn potential into reality.’
Dad nods his head, smiling. Reality. You know, midnight anxiety fits. Suicidal depressive episodes. Three-day benders. Fist-split eyebrows. Bile vomit. Runny shit. Brown piss. Reality.
‘Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all,’ Dad offers.
‘Yes!’ Mrs Birkbeck says, taken aback.
‘Aristotle,’ Dad says earnestly.
‘Yes!’ Mrs Birkbeck says. ‘I live my life by that quote.’
‘Then you keep on livin’, Poppy Birkbeck, and you keep on inspirin’ those kids,’ Dad says sincerely.
Who the fuck is this guy?
‘I will,’ she smiles. ‘I promise.’ Then she refocuses. ‘Look, Robert, can I call you Robert?’
Dad nods.
‘Ummm . . . the boys weren’t at school again today and . . . umm . . .’
‘I’m sorry about that,’ Dad interjects. ‘I took the boys to a funeral of an old friend of theirs. It’s been a tough couple of days for ’em.’
She looks at August and me.
‘A tough couple of years, I understand,’ she says.
We all nod, Dad, August and me, like we’re starring in some sick midday movie.
‘Can I talk to you for a minute, Robert?’ she asks. ‘Maybe just the two of us?’
Dad takes a deep breath. Nods.
‘You two make yourselves scarce, will ya?’ he says.
August and I pad down the ramp at the side of the house, down past the hot water system and a couple of Dad’s old rusting engines. Then we duck under the house, weave through Dad’s store of unwanted and unworking washing machines and refrigerators. The space beneath the house narrows as the earth floor climbs up towards the living room and kitchen areas of the house. We crawl up to the top left corner of the under-house area, damp brown dirt caking our kneecaps, and sit right beneath the wooden floor of the kitchen where Dad and Mrs Birkbeck talk about August and me at the octagonal table Dad usually passes out on at midnight on sole-parent pension day. We can hear every word through the cracks between the floorboards.
‘In all honesty, the work August produces is brilliant,’ Mrs Birkbeck says. ‘His artistic control and originality and innate skill represent a genuine artistic talent, but he . . . he . . .’
She stops.
‘Go on,’ Dad says.
‘He troubles me,’ she says. ‘Both the boys trouble me.’
I never should have told her a word. She had rat written all over her.
‘Can I show you something?’ echoes Mrs Birkbeck’s voice through the cracks.
August is lying down with his back on the dirt. He’s listening but he’s not caring about what he’s hearing. With his hands tucked behind his head like that, he might as well be daydreaming by the Mississippi River with a straw of grass in his mouth.
But I care.
‘This is a painting August did in art class last year,’ she says.