his eyes. I place an imaginary pistol below my chin, giggling, blow my imaginary brains out. August chuckles, hangs himself, tongue out, on an imaginary noose.
‘Eli said August was painting his dreams,’ Mrs Birkbeck says. ‘The moon pool was from Eli’s dreams, he said. But he said he associated deep feelings of fear, feelings of darkness, with the moon pool. He said he could recall this dream in vivid detail, Robert. Has Eli ever spoken to you about his recurring dreams?’
August has a twig in his hand that he breaks into small bits. He throws a bit of stick at my head.
‘No,’ Dad says.
‘He can recall his dreams with remarkable clarity,’ she says. ‘There is great violence in these dreams, Robert. When he tells me about some of these dreams he can describe the sound of his mother’s voice, the way drops of blood look on the wooden floors of a house, he can tell me the smells of things. But I told him that dreams do not come accompanied with smells. Dreams do not come with sound. And I asked Eli to start calling these dreams what they are.’
A long pause.
‘What are they?’ Dad asks.
‘Memories,’ Mrs Birkbeck says.
August writes in the air. Child Safety takes August Bell to hell.
August writes in the air. Child Safety teaches Eli Bell to never tell.
‘Eli said the car went into the moon pool two days before Frances left you,’ Mrs Birkbeck says.
‘Why do you want to dredge all this shit up?’ Dad asks. ‘Those boys are doin’ all right. They’re movin’ on. They can’t move on when bleeding hearts like you keep dredgin’ up shit and twistin’ things around in their heads and replacin’ things that happened in their heads with things that happened in your head.’
‘Eli said you drove them into the moon pool, Robert.’
And the dream feels so different when she says it like that. You drove them into the moon pool. He did drive us into the moon pool. Nobody else did. It had to be him. We were in the back seat and we were playing corners, rolling against each other in the back seat with the weight of a turn squashing one of us into the side door.
‘I like your sons, Robert,’ Mrs Birkbeck says. ‘I’ve come here today in the hope, for their sake, that you can convince me I should not inform the department that August and Eli Bell live in fear of their only guardian.’
I remember the dream. I remember the memory. It was night and the car turned sharply off the road and the car bounced along gravel and between tall gum trees that passed by my window like God was shuffling through images on a life slideshow.
‘It was a panic attack,’ Dad says. ‘I have panic attacks. I get ’em all the time. Had ’em even when I was a kid.’
‘I think Eli believes you did it on purpose,’ Mrs Birkbeck says. ‘I think he believes you intentionally swerved off the road that night.’
‘So did his mother,’ Dad says. ‘Why do you think she fucked off?’
A long pause.
‘It was a panic attack,’ Dad says. ‘Go ask the cops in Samford if you don’t believe me.’
Samford. Yes. Samford. It was rural. Had to be Samford. All the trees and hills. The wheels bounced hard on dips and ditches in the rolling land beneath us. I had enough time to look across at Dad in the front seat. ‘Close your eyes,’ he said.
‘I was takin’ ’em out to Cedar Creek Falls,’ Dad says.
‘Why would you go to Cedar Creek Falls at night-time?’ Mrs Birkbeck asks.
‘You doin’ the cop work now?’ Dad asks. ‘You love this, don’t you?’
‘What?’
‘Having me over a barrel’, he says.
‘How exactly do I have you over a barrel?’
‘’Cause you can take those boys away from me with the tick of a box,’ Dad says.
‘It’s my job to ask difficult questions if those difficult questions ensure the safety of my students,’ Mrs Birkbeck says.
‘You think you’re serving your profession so nobly, so compassionately,’ Dad says. ‘You’ll take those boys from me and you’ll split ’em up and you’ll strip ’em bare of the only thing that keeps ’em going, each other, and you’ll tell your friends over a bottle of chardonnay from Margaret River how you saved two boys from their monster dad who nearly killed them once and they’ll bounce from foster home to foster home until they find each other again at the gate of your house with a can of