Letters to Leonardo (23 page)

Once my stomach has settled and the room stops spinning, Dad says, “Let’s have a go at lunch.”

“Lunch?”

“Nothing too hard – it’s soup.” He dips the spoon into the bowl. “Open up.”

I open my mouth as wide as I can, but it feels like my lips are cracking. Dad spoons in cold soup. I can’t taste it, but it hurts my throat when it goes down. The pain makes it hard to breathe. I panic and push the spoon away. Soup spills everywhere.

That woman is still there – the first one in the blue cardigan. The one I thought was my mother.

“Try and stay calm,” she says. “It’s important that you eat something.”

“Everything’s going to be fine, Matt,” says Dad.

Is it? It’s hard to breathe, hard to swallow and even harder to talk.

The nurse gets a cloth and wipes pale yellow soup from the white sheet. On my left is another bed with exactly the same sheets on it.

“You’re in hospital.” Dad holds my face gently between his hands – stops my darting eyes.

That explains the doctor and nurse.

Doctor Fredrikson comes back after lunch. “I’m going to need to check those arms, I’m afraid,” he says.

I close my eyes. Don’t want to know what’s under there. I try and get the old man with the deep voice back in my head – Leonardo.

When the bandages come off and the air hits my arms, the pain is almost too much.

Help me, Leonardo!

The old man is back. He waves his paintbrush at me. “The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”

Wish I understood.

The old man fades. The bandages are back on. I open my eyes. Doctor Fredrikson sits on the chair next to my bed. His eyes pan from Dad to me – like a lighthouse beacon.

“I’m afraid I have bad news, Matt,” he says.

What does that mean?

As Dad turns away, I see a tear in the corner of his eye.

“The left arm is healing well.”

What’s wrong with it anyway?

“But I think we may have to operate on your right arm. We don’t want you to lose the use of it, do we?”

I shrug. None of it means much to me. Everything’s happening all out of order. I’m still not sure if any of this is real.

Dad smiles. “We can’t have that, can we?” he says. “Can’t have anything stop you from painting – from being the next Leonardo da Vinci.”

I start vomiting and can’t stop. The pain’s unbearable. It’s like someone ripping out my insides. Leonardo da Vinci – that’s who the old man is!

Suddenly, I know for sure that Nurse Blue Cardigan is
not
my mother. The smell of vomit temporarily overpowers the smell of smoke.

I try to shut down my brain, but random thoughts spew out like lava.

Dad watches helplessly as Nurse Blue Cardigan rubs my back and swaps the bucket for a clean one when she needs to.

But no matter what she does, I don’t feel clean. Sweat pours out of me.

My memory has returned. And I remember everything.

I’m allowed out of hospital for the funeral. My arms are bandaged, and I still have this burning sensation inside my chest that makes it hurt when I breathe. Doctor Fredrikson wants me in a wheelchair, but I refuse. “It’s my arms that got burned, not my legs.”

The service is held at the waterhole – Troy’s favourite swimming spot – where I nearly drowned him that time.

So many people.

I lie facedown on the grass, using the pain in my arms as a barrier to everything else. People mill around – step over me. Nobody wants to disturb the grieving best mate.

Before the service starts, I go and lean against the old gum tree that Troy and I tied a rope swing to when we were nine. The swing is not there now because the council took it down – said it was too dangerous.

Steve Bridges puts an arm on my shoulder. “I’m really sorry,” he says.

Me too.

“I’m not coming back for art classes,” I tell him. Painting is what made Mum stop taking her meds. Painting is where all this started – back when I was five and Mum first went off her pills because they stopped her from painting.

“You’re not your mother,” says Steve. “Don’t turn your back on your art. That’s what defines who you are – not the people you were born to, not genes or family resemblances. It’s the essence of you.”

Maybe he’s right, and maybe I’ll pick up a paintbrush again, but not for now.

We all move forward for the service – to the water’s edge where the trees bow down their branches.

Tina does one of the eulogies. She talks about how Troy was one of those genuinely funny guys that made you laugh. “You had to look beyond the jokes to see who he really was. Troy was one of the most special people I ever met.” She breaks down and her mum leads her away. A mum looking after her kid like mums are supposed to.

Just like Mrs Daly, whose never-ending smile is gone. Her face is crumpled with sadness as she puts her arms around Angie and wipes away her daughter’s tears.

I turn away – and later, when I feel Angie’s hand in mine and her broken voice whispers, “Are you okay?” I bolt, and don’t look back. I can’t feel the pain in my arms as I hobble away, just the agony in my chest.

I hide behind our gum tree – Troy’s and mine. I close my eyes, and remember.

Troy would have liked what Tina said about him. Shows she really got him in the end. In my head I hear his crazy laugh – and his voice, “I knew you’d succumb to my irresistible charms, Tina. Everybody does eventually.”

Dear Leonardo
,

I need you to help me understand. How could Mum have done it? How can your brain be that twisted?

I get Dad now – and his whole protection thing. I reckon if I’d looked at your
Dreyfus Madonna
– really looked sooner – I might have understood. The way she’s holding that baby – it looks so fragile
.

But that’s because babies are fragile – and little kids – that’s why Dad needed to protect me from my own mother
.

I’m not a baby now. I’m hurt and I’m changed, but not fragile. I’m going to get through this for Troy. I’m going to save myself. She can’t do any worse to me. I can’t do any worse to myself
.

Some mistakes just can’t be undone, Leo
.

Matt

Dear Leonardo
,

I’m telling you this because there’s nobody left to tell. Ironic how my laptop was saved and Dad’s old squash trophy, but not Troy. I printed off all those letters I wrote to you before the fire and gave them to Mrs D today. She was rapt
.

“Thought I was never going to see these,” she said
.

Probably wouldn’t have shown her except there’s no point in keeping them to myself now
.

Mum and what she did is newspaper headlines again, so my life is out in the open for everyone to read about
.

You know what it’s like to be notorious, Leo. You made headlines because of the way you chose to love. I guess in a way, Mum’s the same
.

It’s hard being back at school. Nobody knows what to say. Tomorrow I get an aide to scribe for me until my hands get better
.

I can still work on the computer because it has voice activation, so I talk, and it writes down what I say. See, my world is very different from the one you lived in
.

I can’t carry the laptop to class. Can’t carry anything yet
.

At least when the aide comes, I won’t have to look at Troy’s empty chair all day
.

Matt

Our house is gone. There’s not one part of my life my mother hasn’t wreaked havoc on. Some days I wish I hadn’t made her come here. I wish she’d stayed a hazy memory.

“You can’t blame yourself,” says Dad. “None of this is your fault.” He’s got no books left, so whatever he says comes from the heart of Dave Hudson, not the pen of a self-help guru.

He’s always looking at me these days – looking for signs that I’m okay. When it first happened, I think he was afraid I’d top myself. But no way! I’m not my mum and I’m not my dad. I’m me, Matt Hudson. And I can’t let what happened to Troy be for nothing. Besides, you can’t do much with two dodgy hands.

Mum has to stay in hospital longer than me, but I can’t bring myself to visit her yet. Dad has gone to Gardenvale a couple of times. Mum’s burns are pretty bad and the doctor says she might never paint again.

Why should she get out of all this without an aftermath? Troy doesn’t even have that. The best he can hope for is an afterlife. He’s never going to paint a masterpiece that the world recognises as truly great. He’s never even going to finish secondary school.

“I don’t see why she should have it easy when you look at what she did to everyone else,” I say to Dad.

“Matt, I know you’re angry with her. I know she’s done terrible things. But don’t let the anger eat away at you. It will only cause you more pain. Your mother’s sick. She never meant to hurt anyone.”

“Well, she did!”

“Matt, her life has never been easy – dealing with her illness. She’s not evil, she’s just a person with a problem.”

“She is the problem!”

Dad wants me to feel compassion for her. I’m working on it – and the weird thing is that the person I’m doing it for is Troy. It’s what he would have wanted. Troy is here in my head: his lopsided grin and his voice like a fairground ride; the quick up-and-down way he had of talking, excited to be living and being and doing.

I reckon the colour of Troy’s voice would have been rainbow – bending light and making it as spectacular as it could be.