It’s only when Dad pulls into our driveway that a word is spoken. They are the first words I’ve ever witnessed Mum say to Dad.
‘Thank you, Robert,’ she says.
*
August and I set about removing the mountain of books from Dad’s book depository. We don’t have enough boxes to box them all. There must be ten thousand paperbacks and, in turn, some fifty thousand silverfish swimming through their pages.
Augusts writes in the air. Book sale.
‘You’re a genius, Gus.’
We drag out an old table Dad has lying under the house. The book stall is erected on the footpath, just near our letterbox. We make a sign out of one of Dad’s XXXX beer cartons, scribble on the blank brown inside of the cardboard: BRACKEN RIDGE BOOK BONANZA – ALL BOOKS 50 CENTS.
If we sell ten thousand books, we make $5000. That’s enough for Mum to get a bond on a rental place. That’s enough for Mum to buy some shoes.
August and I are carting stacks of paperbacks between the book room and the stall outside while Mum and Dad are drinking Home Brand black teas and talking about what I believe are the old times. They have a shorthand these two. Then I realise they were lovers once.
‘But you don’t even like steak,’ Dad says.
‘I know,’ Mum says. ‘And this stuff they served was so tough you could use it to prop up a wonky table. But a couple of the girls showed me how to carve a circle of meat close to the bone on any old road kill and make it look like eye fillet.’
They cared for each other in the time before they hated each other. There is something alive in Dad’s eyes that I’ve not seen before. He’s so attentive to her. Not in his fake way that he usually is when he needs to charm someone. He laughs at things she says and what she says is funny. Black comedy bits Mum says about prison food and the wild adventure of the past fifteen or so years of her life.
I see something. I see the past. I see the future. I see my mum and dad fucking their way to my existence and I want to vomit but I want to smile too, because it’s nice to think they might have started out with high hopes for our so-called family. Before the bad days. Before they got swallowed up by the universe.
The phone rings.
I rush to the phone.
‘Eli, wait,’ Mum says. I stop. ‘It might be him,’ she says.
‘I hope it is,’ I say.
I raise the handset to my right ear.
‘Hello.’
Silence.
‘Hello.’
A voice. His voice.
‘Put your mum on the phone.’
‘You gutless fuck,’ I say down the phone.
Dad shakes his head.
‘Tell him we’ve called the cops,’ Dad whispers.
‘Mum called the cops, Teddy,’ I say. ‘The boys in blue are coming for you, Teddy.’
‘She didn’t call the cops,’ Teddy says. ‘I know Frankie. She didn’t call the cops. Tell your mum I’m coming to get her.’
‘Yeah, Teddy. And my dad is gonna break your coward fuckin’ face in two like he breaks coconuts with his bare hands.’
Dad’s face fills with surprise. ‘Put the fuckin’ phone down, Eli,’ Dad says.
‘Tell your mum I’m coming to get her,’ Teddy barks.
‘We’ll be waiting right here, you gutless cunt,’ I say. It’s the rage that does it to me. It makes me different. I feel something inside me building. All my gathered rage squashed down into my ribs in my youth. I scream, ‘We’ll be waiting right here, Teddy.’
The phone goes dead. I put the handset down. I look at Dad and Mum. August is on the couch, shaking his head. They all stare at me like I’m deranged, which I might well be.
‘What?’ I say.
Dad shakes his head. He stands and opens the pantry door. He uncaps a bottle of Captain Morgan. He slugs half a cup of cheap rum.
‘August, go get the axe handle, will ya?’
*
Slim once told me the greatest flaw of time is that it doesn’t really exist.
It’s not a physical thing, like Teddy’s neck, for example, that I can reach out and strangle. It can’t be controlled or planned around or manipulated because it’s not really there. The universe didn’t put the numbers on our calendars and the