‘I’ve never been here,’ Lucy says.
‘I stop by sometimes,’ I say. ‘To look at the stuff. Some of it’s pretty cool.’
‘So you like graffiti?’ she asks, walking away before I answer, looking at the next carriage.
‘I like some. I don’t like others,’ I say, but she’s not listening.
I look over her shoulder at a piece Leo and me did a while back for a laugh. There’s a guy holding out his thumb on a highway in the first frame and a guy picking him up in the second and the car driving away in the third. The car’s numberplate says
Psycho
. I have a chuckle. Leo thought of that. I was just painting some guy escaping.
‘See,’ she says. ‘He’s funny.’
‘I never said he wasn’t.’ We walk to the next carriage. ‘So you like him because he’s funny?’
‘I like him because he’s clever. And you know, he and I are both artists so we have something in common.’ She flicks her wristband. ‘I’ve been taking glassblowing lessons from Al for almost two years now. He helped me finish my folio.’
‘What’s that like?’ I ask.
‘It’s cool to get an idea and make it with my hands. You know?’
‘I guess,’ I tell her, but what I want to say is yeah, I know. I know all about it late at night when a thought hits me and I can’t sleep till it’s out and onto the wall.
‘Al makes these mobiles that cover the whole ceiling, like flowers hanging from the sky. They tap against each other and because they’re different sizes and thicknesses they make different noises. It’s like a ceiling of singing flowers.’
I looked through his studio window once and thought they were clouds of trumpets. I like them even more now I know they make noise. I couldn’t hear that from outside. ‘I’ve seen them,’ I say, before I think about it.
‘Where?’ she asks.
I cough to give myself a little thinking time. ‘Somewhere in the city. There’s a few glass shops near the paint store.’
She nods. ‘He exhibits in most of the glass galleries.’
I think about how very cool it would be to exhibit somewhere. I know most guys who do walls say they don’t need a gallery, but I wouldn’t mind a white room with my pieces hanging in it. Bert and me went to an exhibition of Ghostpatrol, this street and gallery artist. ‘You could be here,’ Bert said. I told him he was dreaming. He told me dreaming’s the only way to get anywhere.
‘So what’s your folio?’ I ask.
‘It’s five bottles called
The Fleet of Memory
. Al helped me with the name. Inside the bottles are things I like remembering. They’re meant to be like those bottles you see with the ships trapped inside.’
‘So what’s in them?’
‘Stuff I remember. Like, in one there’s a tiny cape and a wand to remind me of when I was ten. My mum sewed costumes for me and her so we could be in Dad’s magic act. He’s a comedian but sometimes he does kids’ parties for extra money. Mum and I got into the box and Dad tapped it and when he opened the curtain we were gone and when he tapped it again we were back.’
‘So, what, you went out through a back door?’
‘That’s the thing,’ she says. ‘The way I remember it, we really did go somewhere. I mean, I know now there was a trick to it but back then Mum knew what it was and I didn’t. The way I remember, Dad made it happen.’
‘My dad was a magician too. Got in his car and disappeared.’
‘Oh,’ she says with this strange look on her face.
‘Don’t worry. He did it before I was born. My mum’s cool.’ We walk further through the train yard, stopping every now and then to look at something Leo and me painted.
She stands in front of one I don’t want her to see. There’s nothing funny about the white ocean. There’s a rhythm in the paint, like the water’s trying to catch its breath.
The disappointed sea
, Leo’s written underneath.
‘You ever feel like that?’ Lucy asks. ‘Just flat to the edges?’
I shrug. I don’t want to get into this tonight. ‘What I’m really disappointed about is that
Veronica Mars
didn’t go past a third season,’ I say. ‘And that Turkish Delights don’t come in king-size.’
‘They do now.’
‘Well that’s very good news.’
‘I want peppermint Freddoes to come in king-size but it’s never going to happen,’ she says.
It does seem strange, now that I think about it. ‘You’re right. Why don’t they make the others bigger?’
‘It’s a mystery.’
‘You could buy three and melt them down and freeze them,’ I say.
‘It’d be messy.’
‘It’d still be chocolate. It’d still taste the same.’
‘I guess. But I like my Freddoes neat, with the peppermint
inside
.’
‘You’ve got a pretty hardline stance on the inside/ outside thing.’
‘I do,’ she says, and I like that she can talk about art and Freddoes in the same conversation. I like the idea of her memory fleet, things bottled in so they can’t float away.
We leave the painting and head towards her bike. ‘I always wondered how they got those ships inside the glass.’
‘Al showed me how,’ she says. ‘You make the bottle first. Or you buy it. The ship goes in after. You build it outside, with collapsible masts. You lay a sea of putty in the bottle and then you slide the ship through the neck and raise the sails from outside. That’s how I got my memories in there. I made them small and collapsible. I think I liked those bottles better when they were still mysterious, before I knew how they worked.’
She’s got this chip in her front tooth and I think about running my finger along the edges of it. But then I think about her finding out I’m Shadow. I think about her being disappointed because I’m a guy going nowhere, not a guy who’s sensitive and smart and funny. I think about her going to uni and making glass and me staying where I am spraying walls and scraping rent.
‘I can show you how to get the ship in the bottle,’ she says. ‘If you want.’
‘I don’t know. Seems like a lot of trouble for a boat that’s going nowhere.’
Assignment Five
Poetry 101
Student: Leopold Green
The ticking inside
On the inside of him there’s a wire fence
And past the wire fence is a dog
And past the dog are thieves
And past the thieves
Is a gang of bad dreams
And past the dreams
If you can get past the dreams
Are the things that make him tick
Tick, tick, tick
Ed and I walk through the carriages and I’m in a Shadow world that I didn’t know existed. I imagine him here alone, painting in the blush of light from the next street, and I want to find him even more. Every now and then I think he’s here because in the dark Ed looks like a shadow that someone else is casting.
I tell Ed the things I want to tell Shadow. I tell him about my folio,
The Fleet of Memory
. The bottles are full of things I remember about Mum and Dad before the weirdness of the shed.
In bottle two is a clay fish. It’s small enough to fit through the bottle’s neck because some things you can’t collapse. It’s in the memory fleet because we used to camp at Wilson’s Promontory. Mum would pretend to cook what Dad had caught but really they weren’t big enough so she bought dinner from the fish and chip shop and we all pretended that the fish had come from the ocean. Dad pretended so good I was never really sure if he knew the truth.
In bottle three there are a few things stuck in the putty: the corner of a page from Mum’s manuscript, a tiny piece of my glass, and a joke from one of Dad’s acts. ‘Art is more important than money, Lucy,’ Mum said when I told her about Al’s offer to teach me. ‘We’ll afford it somehow, don’t you worry about that.’
I tell Ed about the colours of Al’s studio, the flowers hanging from the ceiling. I helped Al make those flowers. I turned the pipe while he blew on the end and we watched melting glass become petals.
Some days I don’t want to go home from the studio. I want to stay with those flowers because the light shining through them makes the studio a pastel sky and the shed where Dad lives is falling down. He tapes plastic bags on the windows to keep out the insects and rain.
‘My dad was a magician too,’ Ed says. ‘Got in his car and disappeared.’
He says it like it doesn’t bother him at all and we move through the paintings, to the middle of the yard, till there’s nowhere to go but the last painting.
The disappointed sea
, Poet’s written. I feel like that when I see my dad walking out of the shed in the morning in his dressing gown and slippers, carrying his little toilet bag.
‘You ever feel like that?’ I ask. ‘Just flat to the edges?’
I don’t know what I expect Ed to say but I don’t expect him to talk about
Veronica Mars
and Turkish Delight and Freddoes. I like that he can talk about art and chocolate and TV and I like that it doesn’t feel awkward. At least till I offer to show him how to make a ship in a bottle and he tells me it’s a waste of time. Nothing about art is a waste of time. ‘It’s the time wasting that gets you somewhere,’ Al says.
Shadow would have known that. He would have said yes and we’d have headed back to Al’s to see my folio and made collapsible ships that sail on putty. I imagine him, in his silver suit, leaning over his ship, gently bringing up the sails.
‘You don’t have to look for Shadow with me,’ I say when we get back to my bike. ‘You can leave. Or I can ride you to Beth’s place if you want.’ I put on my helmet.
He looks at me long enough for it to feel kind of awkward. Then he shrugs and says, ‘If you want you can drop me at the station.’ He crouches like a runner. ‘Okay, I’m ready. Go.’
‘You’re making fun of me.’
‘Uh-uh. I’m excited by the challenge.’
He looks so stupid that it cancels out my stupid so I give in and ride and he runs and gets on the bike after only two tries. ‘That was much easier,’ I say.
‘You run next time. We’ll compare definitions of easy.’
Mum says be careful of boys who never take anything seriously. Dad says a boy needs a good sense of humour to get through his love life. Jazz says my dad must need a sense of humour to get through his love life, if he’s living in the shed.
‘So who else’s nose have you broken since mine?’ Ed asks.
I make like I’m counting. I don’t want to tell him that I’ve had exactly no dates since him. I’ve spent my time looking for Shadow. Which could, to some people, Jazz says, look a little pathetic.
‘That many, huh?’ Ed asks.
‘Okay, well, David Graham asked me on a date. I said yes but I backed out after I heard him say in Art that anyone could paint the shit he saw at the Picasso exhibition. Anyone who thinks that is stupid.’
‘That is stupid.
Woman with a Crow
. Not everyone could paint that.’
The night wheels past us, lights and roads and trees. ‘You like that painting?’ I ask. ‘You know that painting?’
‘Don’t sound so surprised.’
‘I’m not, I just thought . . .’
‘That art’s a secret club only you and Shadow get to be in?’ Ed finishes my sentence.
‘No.’ Maybe. I don’t know. I am surprised. If he really liked art so much, how come he didn’t say something on our date? How come he quit school in the middle of our Jeffrey Smart assignment and left me to finish the work by myself? ‘Did you go to the exhibition?’ I ask.
‘Bert and me went to see that painting. Bert liked how it looks as if the woman in the painting is in love with a bad bird. “In love with the bad times,” he said.’
‘Who’s Bert?’
‘My old boss at the paint store. He died two months ago. Heart attack in aisle three.’
‘That’s awful.’
‘Better than a heart attack in aisle four, which is where they keep the floral wallpaper. Bert hated that aisle but it was the money-spinner. He died looking at the deep reds.’
‘I guess if you have to go it’s best to see something beautiful on the way out.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Do you miss him?’
‘He was a good guy. Paid me more than he could afford but I didn’t know that till after the funeral. He taught me stuff. And he drew the coolest things. Stop for a second.’
‘If I stop pedalling you’ll have to run again.’
‘I know, stop for a second.’
I do and he gets off and pulls a book out of his pocket. The pages are bent and it’s dirty around the edges. We lean on someone’s fence and he moves in close. ‘Look.’ He flicks the pages and a little guy does a couple of kicks in the air.
‘That is the coolest thing.’
Ed flicks through all these animations. Two guys drinking beer. A dog rolling over and playing dead. A guy at a counter serving a woman. A man on his knees proposing. ‘That’s Bert asking Valerie to marry him,’ Ed says, and I like the little smile he gets when he says it. I like the way he holds the book. Like all those drawings add up to something more than money.