stands, 24/7, our old iron rusting away in its square metal hand.
‘Because he’ll never be able to read Henry Miller,’ he says.
We push the pot plant in place.
‘Gotta be careful where we put him,’ Dad says. ‘Moving Henry to a new place kinda gives ’im a shock.’
‘You serious?’ I ask.
He nods.
‘Different kind of light shines on him, new temperature in a new place, bit of a draught maybe, change in humidity, and he thinks it must be a different season. He starts shedding his leaves.’
‘So he can feel things?’
‘Sure, he can feel things,’ Dad says. ‘Henry Bath is a sensitive son of a bitch. That’s why he turns on the waterworks all the time. Like you.’
‘Whaddya mean, like me?’
‘You like a good cry,’ he says.
‘No, I don’t,’ I say.
He shrugs his shoulders.
‘You loved to cry as a bub,’ he says.
I forgot this. I forgot he knew me before I knew him.
‘I’m surprised you remember,’ I say.
‘Of course I remember,’ he says. ‘Happiest days of my life.’
He stands back and assesses the new location of Henry Bath. ‘Whaddya reckon?’ Dad asks.
I nod. August holds two pieces of Christmas tinsel in his hands, one twinkling red and one twinkling green, both of them losing their tinsel fibres over time, like Henry Bath slowly loses leaves and Dad might be slowly losing fibres of his mind.
August lays the tinsel carefully over Henry Bath and we stand around the weeping fig, marvelling at the saddest Christmas tree in Lancelot Street and possibly the Southern Hemisphere.
Dad turns to us both.
‘I got a Christmas box coming from St Vinnies later this afternoon,’ he says. ‘Got some good gear in ’em. Can of ham, pineapple juice, some liquorice squares. I thought we could have a bit of a day of it tomorrow. Give each other gifts ’n’ shit.’
‘What, you got us gifts?’ I ask, dubious.
August smiles, encouraging. Dad scratches his chin.
‘Well, no,’ he says. ‘But I had an idea.’
August nods. Great, Dad, he writes in the air, urging Dad on.
‘I had this thought that we could each choose a book from the book room and we could wrap it up and put it under the tree,’ Dad says.
Dad knows how much August and I have been enjoying his bedroom book mountain.
‘But not just any ol’ book,’ he says. ‘Maybe something we’ve been reading or something that’s really important to us or something we think someone else might enjoy.’
August claps his hands, smiling. Gives a thumbs-up to Dad. I’m rolling my eyes as if my eye sockets were filled with two loose Kool Mint lollies from a St Vincent de Paul Christmas charity box.
‘Then, you know, we can eat some liquorice squares and read our books for Christmas,’ Dad says.
‘And how is this any different from any other day for you?’ I ask.
He nods. ‘Yeah, well, we can all read in the living room,’ he says. ‘You know, we can read together.’
August punches me in the shoulder. Stop being a dick. He’s trying. Let him try, Eli.
I nod. ‘Sounds great,’ I say.
Dad goes to the kitchen table and tears a TAB betting ticket into three pieces, scribbles a name on each piece with the pencil he uses to circle horses in the form guide. He screws the pieces up and holds them in his hand.
‘You get first pick, August,’ Dad says.
August picks a piece of ticket, opens it with a glint of Christmas spirit in his eye.
He shows us the name: Dad.
‘All right,’ Dad says. ‘August picks a book for me. I pick a book for Eli and Eli picks a book for August.’
Dad nods. August nods. Dad looks at me.
‘You will stick around for it, won’t ya, Eli?’ Dad asks.
August looks at me. You’re an arsehole. Really.
‘Yeah, I’ll stick around,’ I say.
*
I don’t stick around. At 4 a.m., Christmas morning, I place a copy of Papillon for August beneath the Christmas tree, wrapped in the sports pages of The Courier-Mail. Dad’s wrapped his book for me in The Courier’s Classifieds pages. August has wrapped his book for Dad in the up-front news pages.
I walk to the train station in the nearby seaside suburb of Sandgate – famed for its fish and chips and nursing homes – taking the shortcut crossing over the motorway to the Sunshine Coast, normally a frantic exercise of Evel Knievel–level insanity requiring Bracken Ridge kids to leap a steel guardrail, dodge four lanes of speeding traffic, leap another steel guardrail and slip through a hole the size of a dinner plate in a