The Tree (7 page)

The first time I saw the drain man in our house, properly inside it, was that night, and he was too large to fit. He was as imposing as Gulliver surrounded by the puny Lilliputians. It didn't feel right having him encased inside walls, it felt like he would burst through the rotting seams of the house. Mother must have felt the same, I saw her cowering as he spoke. She led him out, through the floor-length window in her bedroom to the verandah, but not before he'd lectured her about the state of the house and the tree and the roots and the steps.

‘Dropping' – he flung an arm behind him, pointing to the said steps – ‘dropping off the back of the house.'

I stayed awake for hours determined not to sleep, so I could hear when the drain man left, if he left. I lay on my back so I couldn't get comfortable and kept one finger in my mouth and every time I felt myself lowering into sleep, I bit my finger hard so I'd stay awake. With the added noise of the tree rubbing at the window it wasn't that difficult. I heard them stirring eventually, crouching down to step through the window back into the house, then moving towards the front door. I knew Edward was still awake, I could see him through my window bent over his books, but with half an ear listening out as well.

He didn't see what I did though, the two of them by the front door in the shadows embracing. I hadn't meant to see them, but I had, and my mother was furious and shocked and I must have looked like the spy I was, standing in the hallway not even trying to hide.

They kissed like people on television and I must have squealed because I was so cross I wanted to cry, but I had paid my mother back, without realizing it, ten-fold for betraying me to the priest and Mr King.

I crawled up the tree that night to commiserate with my dad. He sang me a lullaby I'd never heard before. It went over and over and soothed me to calmness. And to think I had believed, so stupidly I then realized, that, because of the angels in heaven that I'd been taught about, I would be rewarded for finding my dad in the top of the tree. I thought it would be like Lourdes. People would journey from all over the world to our tree. They would make pilgrimages to be cured of their ailments. I fantasized about my fame, the fame of our house, our suburb. I didn't understand that you could be taught about the mystical, but be forbidden to believe in it, seek it out or enjoy it. The mixed message caused an anger to descend that made me hate the world, hate my mother, hate Megan and the drain man; my mother the most though.

It hit me then, that I only came to talk to my dead father when I felt lousy. When I felt good I ignored him.

‘I'm so pleased to talk to you any time in any condition,' he had answered.

I could see my mother in her bedroom window, she was looking straight up at us. I nested in behind a frayed drop of leaves. I knew she knew where I was, but I wasn't going back to the house, ever. I decided I was going to stay in the tree. I could come down to the lower branches to get food that I would ask Edward to bring me. And if I convinced him I needed it, maybe he could, with Mum's permission, build me a tree house a bit lower down. I could sleep in there. Really there was no reason to return to earth.

I heard my mother hissing at me from below. She was stuck halfway out of her window. I refused to answer her.

‘I'm furious with her,' I said.

‘She's got to get on and so do you,' my father said.

He was so understanding, it made me cross. It was easy for him, it was so calm and peaceful where he was living, lit by the sunset in the salmon pink gaps between the branches. I wanted him to side with me, his only daughter, but he wouldn't. He was sitting on the confounded fence like he always had. He would never put me before her and so discreetly he always put her before me.

‘No way,' I huffed. ‘No way.'

My mother had woken Edward now, her henchman. They were on the top step, their voices transported easily through the balmy night air.

‘Simone. Come down now,' my mother said.

‘No way, creeps,' I replied.

It must have been after midnight. They advanced down the stairs, Edward behind my mother. I could see him clutching the top of his pyjama bottoms, trying to keep them from falling down. Any spring there may have been in the elastic waistband had been washed out long ago. Aware that the neighbours may be listening she sent Edward out in front. She stayed back in the shadow of the laundry door. James was awake too, I could sense it. He was somewhere in the house watching.

I felt sorry for Edward having to do my mother's dirty work.

‘No,' I said when he was halfway up the tree, before he'd even said a word. ‘I'm not coming down, so you might as well not bother to come up.'

‘For God's sake, Simone,' he said. ‘I need to go to bed. I've got exams tomorrow.'

I remembered some elephantine Aunt or other had commented on that, at the time of Dad's death – ‘. . . and with Edward's exams coming up . . .'

‘I'm not coming down ever,' I said. ‘I hate you all and I'm going to live up here now.'

‘Why don't you start as of tomorrow?' said Edward. ‘And give me a break.'

‘No,' I said.

‘You're so bloody selfish,' he said, retreating down the tree. But mother wouldn't have it and she demanded he climb up again.

‘What's so good about this bloody tree?' he said, settling on a branch below mine, resigned it seemed to life in the tree with me.

‘I can talk to Dad. That's all,' I said. ‘And Mum used to, but now she doesn't any more.'

‘What do you mean, talk to him? Dad's dead.'

‘You haven't even tried. So how would you know?'

‘Because I know there's no point.'

I wished he would, but I knew he was locked into the logic of his textbooks, he couldn't let go of that and I didn't hate him for it.

‘I'm going to stay up here,' I said. ‘Until she promises to stop kissing the plumber.'

‘Did she kiss him?'

‘And not just a little kiss, either,' I said.

‘What else then?'

‘It was like a kiss with arms.'

I could see Edward shake his head. He seemed in no hurry to move now either.

‘What is going on?' my mother called up. I could hear she was seething through the grille of her locked teeth. Neither of us answered her.

‘Would one of you speak?' I heard a rustling below us and realized she had started to climb up after us.

‘Where are you?' She had stopped at a point below Edward. Her voice was hoarse with restrained fury. She was trying to whisper, but I felt the entire neighbourhood knew we were in the tree.

‘Simone is upset,' said Edward. ‘Because she saw you kissing the plumber.'

Edward had taken up my corner and I felt huge affection for him. My mother didn't reply.

‘All I know is it's one o'clock and it's school tomorrow and I get in trouble from the teachers if you're tired,' Mum finally said.

‘Whose fault is that?' said Edward.

I couldn't remember him ever answering her back in that tone.

‘I should be in bed. I've got exams tomorrow, but you wake me up like a madwoman and force me up this tree,' he said to Mum. ‘I don't care if she stays up here or not.'

Maybe because there was this distance and branches between us Edward felt liberated to speak in a way he couldn't have face to face.

‘It's none of your business what I do with the plumber,' she said.

‘It is, if you're kissing him,' I said.

‘Ssssh!' my mother hissed.

‘And I don't want you to kiss him,' I added.

Suddenly I became aware of this other silent person. The fourth party. The tree.

‘You don't know,' my mother said, sounding feeble and close to tears, ‘I'm so lonely.'

‘How does that make us feel,' said Edward.

‘See, you don't understand that I can love you, but still be lonely.'

‘You can talk to Dad,' I said, speaking to the bark on the branch in front of where my chin was resting.

‘I can talk to him, that's true, but I can't touch him.'

‘Imagine how he feels,' I said.

‘You're so on his side because he's dead. He's got such an unfair advantage!' She raised her voice.

She'd started to say that we would love him more than we loved her because of that. That he had died young, and missed out on decades of yelling at us. A job she had to do exclusively now. It gave her more wrinkles, she said, wrinkles that should have been shared out between the two of them, and it made us hate her more than him, that was her argument.

I don't know who moved first, but finally one of us did, and the others followed back down to the ground. We stared at each other, then acted like nothing that had been said had really been said. But it was too late it had been, and we slunk up the back stairs as a volley of mangoes fell from the tree in the Kings' back yard.

Skirting around the house to the front steps, that's what we kept doing all week while Edward did his exams, and we wondered what our mother would do with the house falling apart and the drain man's visits that were extending by half an hour on each occasion. The back door was now firmly shut. I didn't see Megan, I didn't stand by the back fence and call her and she didn't call me. It was easy in that first week because school was finishing and we had exams too, but then we broke up and normally before us would stretch seven golden weeks of sunshine and beach holidays and hours and hours of playing with Megan. Not these holidays. There was no sign of anything normal.

On the last day of school Mrs O'Grady my teacher found I'd been under the school building, hiding by the blackened stumps where the red soil was drilled with the holes of the ants' nests. I'd heard the school bell ring, it was three o'clock, time to go home, not for the day, but for seven weeks. I'd heard my class having their party on the floor above me, believed I could smell the sugar from the pink icing on the fairy cakes I'd seen Katherine Padley bring in a large square Tupperware container. Of course our mother had forgotten we were supposed to contribute something to the party. I felt them treading on the boards above me and in my cave I felt safe. After I'd heard the bell and the commotion as everyone dived for their bags and cleared their desks, I heard them run off. I peeked out from under the building. The gum trees rattled their leaves and a gust of wind carried the scent of the eucalypt down from the mountains; I felt there must be a storm coming.

Somewhere there was a rain-soaked eucalyptus forest. The school incinerator was burning the last of the year's rubbish, sending it into a brown funnel of smoke up to the never-ending blue. In the dry tufts of grass in front of me I found a grass trap. Two lumps of grass tied in a double knot. Lethal if your foot landed in the trap when you were in full flight. Head over heels you could fly. I untied the trap I had seen Tommy Butler set for the teacher on play duty that lunchtime. As I untied it I looked up and found myself staring at Mrs O'Grady's kneecap. I thought my absence had gone unnoticed, but I'd forgotten there was my desk and school bag giving me away, and my mother had apparently been embarrassed into returning to the school with enough drink, diluted, to go around the whole school. The container with my name on it was hanging from Mrs O'Grady's manicured hand. That was apparently when Mrs O'Grady noticed I was missing. She'd told my mother, I was about – that is actually how she'd put it. It was odd to hear that my mother had been shamed into action and I wasn't sure if I was more embarrassed that she'd returned to the school with a late contribution than if she'd dismissed it all together. Of course she was forgiven because of her husband's unexpected departure and I could imagine there was whispering in the staff room and those connections reiterated.

Mrs O'Grady led me back to the empty classroom and sat at her desk while I collected my things.

‘Thank you, Mrs O'Grady,' I said, as I went to leave.

‘Thank you, Simone. It's been a pleasure having you in the class.'

I stopped at the door, I didn't want to leave. Mrs O'Grady was pretty and she wore a different dress every day of the year. Her lipstick was pale pink, like an angel's lips and I knew she had no children and I dreamt she would take me home. When I was at kindergarten I thought the teachers lived there, but I had worked it out now, they had their own houses, they didn't stay at school over night. I wanted to go to Mrs O'Grady's house and not mine. I knew she'd have a spare bed with clean sheets. I remembered then that I'd found a rock for her on the way to school that morning. I took it out and went up to her desk.

‘Mrs O'Grady.' I handed her the smooth rock. I had realized when I picked it up how happy I was that I wasn't a rock, that I was a girl and I could have been a rock, but I wasn't. It was smooth quartz.

‘Thank you, Simone,' she said. ‘I'll really treasure this.'

And I don't know why, but I burst into tears. She pushed her chair out from her desk and then her pale pink lips were talking in my ear. The same way they had done when she'd picked me out of the class the day my dad had died. The same way she'd consoled me on my first day back at school.

‘It's a lot to ask a child to deal with.' I think she was crying and speaking to herself.

‘I don't want to go home,' I said. ‘Please don't make me go.'

She couldn't look at me or speak, she just held me and I cried.

‘You'll have such a wonderful time . . .' She couldn't finish, because she knew I wouldn't have a wonderful holiday. I was condemned to seven weeks with my grieving mother and three brothers and a best friend I wasn't talking to.

Mrs O'Grady didn't offer to drive me home, I wondered if it was because it would remind her too much of the day I had driven home with her to my house. My mother half-insane at the door, telling me Dad was dead. They'd always known about his heart problem. They'd known since birth, since marriage, since children, but it made it no easier when, as had been predicted by the doctors all his life, he died at forty-three, at work, moving a house from Toowoomba to Graceville.

I'd felt his heart once when it was fluttering. He'd move his head away from it as if he were trying to disown it.

‘Ticker's gone haywire again, Dawn,' he'd say.

Sometimes people would ask how he was and he would laugh. His merriment was infectious.

‘Not dead yet,' he'd say.

It was the greatest joke ever. Not for Mum, she always looked worried. Dad didn't and now I knew why. If he died, which he did a few weeks later, it wasn't going to be his problem, it was going to be Mum's. I think he must have known he would soon be off the hook, floating away from us, having a marvellous time. There was not a second even for him to extract himself from life. When the time came he just got up from the table and walked out the back door and never came back. Well, that's what it felt like. The clock just stopped, it didn't run down slowly. It just stopped.

He and his partner Ab had been moving a house, that's what they did. They found old Queenslanders often raised up high on wooden stumps and they chopped them in half, sometimes quarters, loaded them on to semi-trailers and drove them through the streets late at night to their new places of rest. All Dad's tools were still under our house. The long jacks they used to raise the houses from their stumps and his tool box full of saws and hammers. There were parts of houses, twists of staircases, cornices from ceilings, sections of verandahs, railing, half slabs of tongue and groove walls. All stacked and not moved since his death. Ab had promised he'd come and collect it all, but I knew he couldn't face us and Mum, and we couldn't face him or the prospect of losing the last bits of Dad. The bits that represented his work, the thing he loved, wooden houses, and the idea that you could move them on the back of the truck, he never got over the novelty of that.

Couples would come to Dad and Ab's allotment and saunter along the corridors of houses bought on spec by Dad and Ab and choose their dream house. It always gave Dad a thrill, not just the business, what he loved was the life in these houses, often surrounded on all sides by verandahs with full-length doors that opened out on to them.

‘You're virtually living outside,' he'd say. ‘With nature. In nature. That's pretty special. Beautiful houses. The best in the world.'

He'd talked about the day when he would buy a block of land somewhere, then find the house with the widest verandah and move it there, in the dead of night, and rebuild it, bringing it back to life, that was the dream. His dream, not my mother's. My mother had no interest in what surrounded her, she was not house proud, she liked books and cigarettes and people and watching television.

Finally I walked out of school with my case full of books and the empty drink container. Up the hill I walked as slowly as I could, savouring every step of peace. The mountains at the back of the house held such promise. I wished I was a traveller. I could keep walking towards the line of lilac and green humps set against the ocean of sky. They were away, way beyond the drive-in movie and the monastery where the weekend before my mother had suddenly packed us all in the car and taken us to confession. Something we rarely did, but mother was superstitious and I figured she needed to get something off her chest.

Below the mountains was Megan's school with its amphitheatre-shaped sports ground. She was probably at home already. Maybe she was calling for me, I quickened my pace.

When I got back I saw that Megan was already there, packing up the caravan with her father, they were leaving that afternoon to go on holiday. I watched from my bedroom window. The momentum caused by the possibility of travel seemed to fill them with such promise and energy and the thought of staying put made me feel so dull. We had slipped into a depression we couldn't move. All we managed to do was mirror each other's moroseness. I caught Edward sneaking a look at the Kings' packing too. I mostly knew Edward as someone who sat behind a stack of books. Now that he was out from behind them he didn't seem to know what to do with himself. His study had given him the perfect escape from Dad's death, but now the reality of it was beginning to touch him. He had no father, and not even any books.

James had actually worked up the guts – we'd dared him to do it when we'd met at the top of the hill on the way home from school – to ask Mum if we were going on holiday anywhere this year. The response he got from her was a deadly glare that seemed to indicate we'd be lucky to even get a trip into town. Gerard couldn't care less, every day was a holiday for him, though these were his last days of innocence. The final weeks of freedom before he found out what it was like to have the precipice of returning to school hanging over you.