Last Day in the Dynamite Factory (8 page)

The diary falls to the floor, face up; the dirty mess of it displayed beside his bare foot.
His
foot?
His
legs? The skin, the hair, the creepy familiarity.

Ben's
.

Despite the fan, the den is stifling. Chris feels dizzy, nauseous. He lurches up and teeters into the passageway, just making it to the ensuite before throwing up. He tries to dodge the mess but slips on it and crashes onto his back. The ceiling swoops down and his ears shriek, warning of oblivion. His eyes close. A face looms – the face of a traitor, a liar, a thief; the face of his – his father.

How
…

his breath comes in streaks,

could …

he …?

‘Chris!'

He blinks, but can't focus.

‘Chris – what happened? Can you talk?'

He opens his mouth and the sea rushes in. Liam's body presses on his chest, his lungs scream for air. Liam … his brother. His
brother
.

‘Oh, my God, Chris … can you understand me? Can you see me? Smile … smile, Chris –
please!
'

Breathe … it's all he can do to breathe.

Diane takes his hand. ‘Can you feel my hand?'

He can feel her hand, yet he seems to be shrinking away from it, becoming smaller, smaller; doll-sized … marble-sized … a baked bean … a dot … the absence of a dot. A hand touches his face. His own – waxy and alien.

He struggles to sit up.

‘Thank God.' Diane touches his face. ‘Can you feel this?'

He nods.
Water
. But he has no voice.

Diane heaves a sigh of relief. She helps him up and walks with him back to his den.

‘What happened?' she says as he sinks onto his chair.

Jo's diary is still open on the floor. He kicks it. She picks it up and slides on her glasses that dangle from the rope-thing on her chest. As she reads, a vertical line appears between her brows. She turns a page and the sound is shocking, it's so casual, as if she's reading nothing more significant than a newspaper.

‘Oh,' she says, her eyes round as olives. ‘Oh – Chris. I can't believe it – in all that time I never saw it.' She stares at him, scouring his face and connecting the dots. ‘There were things – easy to say now, I suppose – but there were things … I dismissed them. There was a boy at uni, the living spit of his father, yet he was adopted. You look so much like Jo, I – well, you have some of Ben's mannerisms – but I put that down to living with him.' She fans her face with the diary. ‘I suppose … I suppose it's good that it's out in the open but what a shock. You've always wondered who your father was. Now you know.'

Chris shakes his head, more shudder than shake. Diane nods, shuts the diary and puts it on his drawing board.

‘Yes, a lot to absorb. I'll make some tea.'

When she leaves he sweeps the diary onto the floor and leans on the drawing board, cradling his head in his arms. Beneath his elbows, Mrs Stanton's plans for renovation await his attention. Renovation? Ridiculous. Her house is so badly fucked about with, it should be demolished. He'll tell her. He picks up a pencil and gouges an X across the drawing, his eyes following his hands.
His
hands? Long, strong-fingered, adept with a pencil, a computer and a lathe. The lathe, taught to him by his … Ben, who also taught him to play cricket and tennis, who explained the spark plug, the head gasket and the diff. Ben, who showed him how to shape timber on the bench in his shed, to use handsaws, chisels and planes that coiled slivers of wood as finely as butter in a dish, who taught him to make joints – biscuit, dovetail, mortise, who advised the best knives for scribing against a rule – single-bevel skew, double-bevel skew, spearpoint – the sharp ends of which allow crisp straight lines in either direction. Crisp straight lines. Despite architecture's convincing case for straight lines, he doubts there are any. Adopted. Adopted by his own father.

Ask no questions
…

And he didn't, because if Ben said there was nothing to tell, then there was nothing to tell. Chris scoops his old exercise book from the floor. Fletcher, his childhood alter ego, is everywhere.
Can I go to the shop? Milo, please. Yellow shirt
. In one, he is gazing, empty-eyed, at the sky.

Chris takes a black pen and draws a circle over Mrs Stanton's living room. A smaller circle on top, but not so small it can't accommodate a brain far smarter than his own, ears sharp enough to detect bullshit and glasses strong enough to see what is hidden. Still Fletcher, but an older, wiser Fletcher. He gives his little man a bow, a quiver of arrows and a mental directive: kill.

Fletcher gazes at him solemnly.
I'm a fletcher, not an archer. My arrows are made for the pleasure of crafting something beautiful. They're for target boards, not people.

‘Tea, Chris,' Diane calls.

In the kitchen she pours tea into two fine China mugs – proper leaf tea, not bags. She takes a lettuce from the fridge, snaps off leaves and rinses them under the tap. Chris puts a glass beneath the running water.

‘Don't.' She empties the glass and refills it from a jug of filtered water. ‘Lunch won't be long.'

He stares at the glass, at the tea and at the pen in his hand – an arrow poised to fall on a traitor's heart. But all that fall are tears, great slow stripes down his face, a sight so disturbing Diane looks away. For a moment, the air holds only the sound of her husband's sobs, then she lays a tentative hand on his shoulder. Tears plop from his chin onto the expensive German laminate, chosen especially for its resilience. Chris leans his head on his wife's shoulder and she puts an arm around his back but her discomfort is unmistakable, as if he – the man – should be the comforter, not the consoled. Men must wear the pants, even if they don't fit.
Tap-tap
; her hand beats softly on his back.

Chris lifts his head. ‘Sorry,' he whispers. The tears have, at least, restored his voice.

‘It's okay. You've had a shock. Why don't you go and wash up and I'll finish making lunch. You'll feel better after something to eat.'

She will, anyway.

He goes to the bathroom, now cleared of his smelly distress, and washes his face with a bar of pear and ginger soap.

Back in his den, Fletcher waits on the drawing board.
A Crying Room
, he mutters.
A place where you can cry without being embarrassed.

A crying room. What a good idea. Chris runs his eyes over Mrs Stanton's drawing. Who needs a third toilet, anyway? He's about to redesignate Mrs Stanton's toilet when Diane comes to the door.

‘Lunch is ready.'

Chris attends a Caesar salad.

‘They should have told you,' Diane says. ‘When you were old enough to understand.'

‘Understand
what?
My mother had a baby with her sister's husband. How … how could she
do
that?'

A Vita-Weat on its way to Diane's mouth stalls. ‘She was young, Chris. Young girls do foolish things. Things they wouldn't do if they were thinking straight.'

‘She didn't do it on her own. Ben was hardly a kid; he was the same age as us when we had Phoebe.' He screws up his eyes. ‘Can you imagine pretending Phoebe wasn't ours? Nothing could make me do that; not starvation, war, torture or universal annihilation –
nothing
.'

‘It was a different era back then. I suppose he did what he thought was right at the time.'

‘You're defending him?'

‘No, but … at least he didn't abandon you.'

‘Jesus.' Chris drops his fork and stares at his plate as if memories are stored in lettuce and olives and feta. ‘I thought it took the finest kind of person to love a kid you got lumbered with through no choice of your own. And when your own child died, it took greatness to keep loving that kid with no apparent resentment that he's alive and yours is dead. All my life I've thought that. But it was bullshit; I was cheated of relationships that were rightfully mine. Liam was my brother, Diane. My
brother
.'

Jo's parents arrived at Liam's memorial services dressed head to foot in black. Mary Johansson allowed her cool, unfocussed gaze to rest briefly on her surviving bastard grandson before turning away, as if his presence, when her legitimate grandson was dead, was unbearable. Her tall, dour-faced Swedish husband stared straight ahead.

Ben's parents came from their farm in the Mary Valley. Grandpa could only stay a day – the cows needed milking – but Gran stayed on to cook, wash and take down the Christmas decorations. She made things look normal again, even though they weren't.

Liam had gone, yet he was still there. Jo and Ben were still there, but they had gone. Uncle Ben stayed in his shed, appearing only for meals which he barely touched. Aunty Jo lay on their bed and cried, a terrible sound that came from so deep inside her it was no more than a wheeze by the time it got out. Chris was locked in silence, most of his communication coming through Fletcher.

Eventually Gran had to go home. There was nothing more she could do. Before she left she took Chris outside and sat with him under the jacaranda tree.

‘I need you to promise me something, Christopher. What you and I saw – what really happened to Liam – we must never tell anybody. Yes, I know you can't talk now, but soon you will be able to, and you must never tell anyone about the – the glass. Uncle Ben and Aunty Jo didn't see what happened. They think Liam drowned, and it's kinder to let them think that because drowning is a much more peaceful way to die. It's their only consolation. Do you understand?'

Chris stared at the ground, at the mossy softness of lies, and nodded.

‘Promise me?'

Again, he nodded.

‘Good boy.' She kissed his cheek. ‘You're all they have now, so go kindly with them; make them proud. Proud enough for two boys – yes?'

Yes.

Chris hadn't been able to save Liam but he would do whatever he could to save Aunty Jo and Uncle Ben. After Gran left, he took on the job of Mother and Father Bird. If fledging was a matter of feeding and caring for the helpless until they could manage on their own, he would. Tea, coffee, fruit, biscuits and sandwiches: vegemite, peanut butter, cheese or jam. He took it all on trays to the shed and to the bedroom. He washed up, dried up and put away the dishes, made his bed, did the laundry and squeezed it through the wringer. Hung it out to dry in the backyard, standing on an old butter box.

One day Aunty Jo appeared by his side, her eyes all puffy and blinking in the sunlight. ‘When does school start again?' she said, handing him a peg.

Chris held up five fingers.

She looked at him and blinked again. ‘You still can't talk?'

He took a sock from the basket and pegged it up.

‘Chris,' she said. ‘I'm sorry …'

They took him to a doctor who looked down his throat, and then to another one who didn't. He asked Chris to lie on a couch and dangled a plumb-bob in his face that went from side to side until Chris felt dizzy and closed his eyes …

Liam running … Chris hobbling after him, his leg on fire. Can't keep up. Gran howling from somewhere above and – Liam!
No
… the terrible gleam … the unbearable weight … the hair in his face … the bloody bubbles and …

The doctor was shaking him. ‘It's okay, boy. You'll be all right. Shock,' he said to Jo and Ben. ‘Don't worry. He'll talk when he's ready.'

Chris was ready but the words were not.

Words were scarce in the Bright household. Ben and Jo guarded their grief, Chris guarded the unspeakable. He had discovered how few words were necessary to communicate but the inability to make any sound at all terrified him. People who couldn't hear you couldn't see you. He could survive without words but without the sound of his own voice, he stopped hearing his own questions. People talked hectically at him for a few minutes, then matched his silence with their own.