the time has come for Tytus Broz. Row M for my mum and my dad. Sitting together seven seats along row M. My parents. Two spare chairs beside them. Mum sparkles in a black dress that shimmers in some form of light that shines down on her and I look up to find where that light comes from and it’s the ceiling of the auditorium. The whole ceiling is a domed silver-white moon that takes on the colours of the greens and reds and purples that flash on stage. The full moon inside this theatre.
Dad wears a grey vinyl jacket that he obviously bought for $1.50 at the Sandgate St Vinnies. Aquamarine slacks. The fashion sense of a twenty-year agoraphobe who never sees enough humans to follow fashion. But he made it here and the fact he made it here and is still sitting here makes me all wet-eyed. Cheesy fuck I am. Even after everything. All that warped madness beneath the earth. The blinky tears again.
An usher taps me on the shoulder.
‘Are you lost?’ the usher asks.
‘No, I’m not lost,’ I say.
Mum spots me out of the corner of her eye. She smiles and hurries me to her with a wave.
The newsreader starts reading names into the lectern microphone.
‘Magdalena Godfrey, Coopers Plains,’ she says.
Magdalena Godfrey proudly walks on stage from its left wing. She beams as she receives a gold medal on a Queensland maroon ribbon and a certificate from a man on stage in a suit. The man in the suit puts his arm around Magdalena and ushers her towards a photographer front-of-stage who snaps three quick shots of Magdalena giving a goofy smile over her certificate. On the third shot, Magdalena bites into her gold medal for laughs.
‘Sourav Goldy, Stretton,’ Samantha Bruce says.
Sourav Goldy takes the stage and bows, takes a certificate and his gold medal.
I squeeze past six people pulling their knees back courteously in their seats. My black tote bag bumps their heads and their shoulders as I pass.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ Mum whispers.
‘I was working on a story.’
‘What the hell do you have in that bag?’
Dad leans over.
‘Ssssshhhh,’ he says. ‘Gus is up.’
‘August Bell, Bracken Ridge.’
August pads onto the stage. His black jacket doesn’t fit him well, his tie’s too loose and his cream-coloured chinos are ten centimetres too long and his hair is scruffy, but he’s happy and so is my mum, who drops the evening’s booklet program on the ground in a hurry so she has two free hands to clap her brilliant selfless weirdo mute son.
Dad puts a forefinger and thumb in his mouth, blowing a sharp and inappropriate whistle like he’s calling an outback cattle dog home at sunset.
Prompted by Mum’s applause, a vigorous clapping spreads through the auditorium and this makes my mum so proud she has to stand to keep from exploding.
August shakes hands with the man in the suit, gratefully accepts his medal and certificate. He smiles proudly for his photograph; he waves into the crowd and Mum waves back desperately, despite the fact August’s wave was more general, in a queen’s drive-by kind of way. Mum’s going through the six stages of motherly loving: pride, elation, regret, gratitude, hope and pride again. Each of these stages is navigated through tears. August then walks off the right side of the stage.
I stand and begin squeezing past the knees of the people sitting beside me to my right.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Excuse me. My apologies. Sorry about this.’
‘Eli,’ Mum whisper-screams. ‘Where are you going?’
I turn and offer a wave that I hope conveys my hope to be back at my seat in a brief moment. I rush up the central aisle to the back of the auditorium and make for a side door that opens to a walkway where backstage staffers in black shirts and black pants are buzzing about with coffee urns and teacups and silver platters of scones and biscuits. I run forward a few steps, then go back to a walk when an official- and important-looking woman gives me a quizzical eye. I smile casually like I’m meant to be there. Confidence, Slim. Moving in magic. She doesn’t know a thing because I move in magic. I turn through a door that looks like it’s heading to the toilets and the official-looking woman with the evil eye continues up the side-of-hall walkway. I go back out the doorway I just came through and slip casually and efficiently behind a black curtain at the