Tom Houghton (21 page)

The bell sounded to announce the start of the film. I stood there waiting for Ma, eyes fixed on the pub door. The usher told me there was no time to spare; I needed to take my seat immediately. I walked into the theatre and took a seat in the back row, waiting expectantly for Ma to return, ready to whisper her name in the darkness. I turned around every minute or two, expecting to see her there, but then the movie began. I wanted to leave, run out to get her from the pub, or maybe take the train home alone. After twenty minutes, my imagination roamed free and I was convinced Ma had been hit by a car in the street, or else mugged by someone in that decrepit pub filled with the city's scum. A floodgate released tears down my face, streaming down past my chin and dropping onto my shirt. I tried to be as silent as possible, needing the release of the tears but not wanting to draw attention to myself. I couldn't be sure how long I sat there crying, didn't know whether it was audible to the other patrons.

In the shadows created by the black-and-white film, the man in front of me took on a newly creepy form; a woman who turned in my direction, her glasses catching the light of the exit sign behind me, was someone I needed to hide from. I was rigid with fear, cemented to my seat, my only movement the tears that would not stop rolling.

Ma eventually returned. She took the seat next to me as though she'd only been gone a minute. My tear ducts eventually dried up, the snot in my nose stopped creeping towards my top lip. I sat there wondering how she could have left me alone like that without even telling me where she was going, and I hated her for leaving me crying like a newborn. I wanted to scream at her, punch her even, but I did not. A ball of anger formed in my gut and I resolved to tell Mum about this, would enjoy watching my grandmother squirm with remorse. We watched the film in silence and while Ma joined the clapping at its close, I did not.

‘Isn't it a great one?' Ma said enthusiastically as we walked back out into the day, our eyes taking a few seconds to adjust to the sudden burst of light.

I looked at her. She was calm, smiling, oblivious to my previous fear or sense of desolation.

‘Pa never wants to do anything like this with me,' she said with a frown. ‘Maybe we should come here again next Sunday. They're showing Hitchcock.'

Now, with her belongings spread before me, and with the wisdom that even a few years can bring, her life took on the reek of desperation. The banal, unimaginative cards Pa had bought for her birthdays and their anniversaries, filled with tepid verse created to apply universally to sentimental wives and mothers. The simple, scrawled script of Pa, never expressive.
Happy Birthday, Pa
.
35 years! Pa
.
Enjoy your Mother's Day, Pa
. I wondered what, if any, gifts had accompanied these fading coloured cards. I walked over to the workbench, pulled out a large garbage bag and began throwing things into it. Any card with no personal message I threw away. Anything my mother created as a child, I kept. Newspaper clippings of relatives I'd never known were thrown away. I worked methodically, no time or room for sentimentality. If I was to make the garage my own, turn it into my space, then things bearing no connection to my heart or mind would simply have to be discarded.

The garbage bag was three-quarters filled when I came across it. My heart rate jumped a few notches. A theatre program. Shakespeare. The familiar name my grandfather couldn't remember – Helpmann. The most familiar name in Hollywood history – Hepburn. And there, on the inside cover, her shaky script. I knew Hepburn was renowned for being a non-signer. Seeing it now, her name, a word above it I could not decipher, the animated exclamation mark, knowing that the great star had touched this booklet, rested her palm against it as she signed, had looked Ma in the eye, perhaps . . . waves of euphoria swept through my body. It had a physical power, something beyond my control. This was my link to greatness, I thought, a grail of sorts to catapult me from this time and place into my rightful place in destiny. In my possession, rescued from neglect up in Pa's rafters, the program and its signature confirmed what I already knew to be the truth. Hepburn was my relative, and I was more than some distant cousin, nine times removed. This moment marked something momentous, bigger than Tom Houghton of Seven Hills. It was proof.

I ran back to my bedroom, program in hand, shuffled around in my desk for some writing paper my mother had given me. Cream with autumnal leaves, fine texture of lines to guide my sentences. I wrote the letter to her hurriedly, careful to keep my writing neat and small and while it flowed at an incredible pace, when I finished, I was quite amazed to see that I'd made not one spelling or grammatical error. I placed it in an envelope and licked its adhesive strip. My DNA, touched by the great Hepburn! Our two DNAs intertwined as fate insisted they should be. I wrote the address of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, knowing they would be able to forward it for me as they had done so many of my other fan letters, and I placed it carefully in my schoolbag so I could stop in at the post office on the way home the next day.

I made my way back up to the garage and collected together all the rubbish. I walked it down to the bin, opened the front gate and put it out for collection. Then I went back to Pa's magazines. Their hold over me was insistent, strong as the day they'd been discovered. They transported me to a magical place, not the same as movies on a cinema screen, but some darker place, a secret entry into an adult world that was dirty and shameful, one in which I was an intruder. My heart raced frantically with the fear of getting caught, the thrill of getting away with it, the power of self-control . . .

‘Hello? Tom, you up there?'

Mal's voice was some metres behind me, down in the yard, but I was so close to reaching that burning moment that I could not stop. Now with Mal's voice in the background I was living outside of a magazine and the feeling on my skin was real.

‘Bro?'

I let out a cry, hot embers burned in my cheeks. I held the sodden tissue to my nose and pretended to sneeze. I wiped it, so mucus-like, across my top lip, then wiped clean with another corner of the tissue.

‘Mal, hi, what's going on?' I tried to keep my voice even, refused to look him in the eye in case he would be able to see through me and know my dirty secret.

‘Went to see your mum at work, eh, and got talking. Thought maybe you could do with a bit of company or something? What you think?'

‘Oh . . . yeah. That'd be good, Mal. I was just cleaning up a bit.'

‘You getting a cold or something?'

‘No . . . Just all the dust.' I forced the tissue into my pocket and smeared my fingers against the lining.

‘Hey, is that a boat, mate?' Mal asked, gesturing towards the canvas in the corner.

‘Yeah . . .'

‘Is it yours?'

‘It was my pa's. Mum said I could have it, so I'm gonna clean it up and sell it.'

‘Can I take a look, bro?'

He whistled in appreciation at the boat. It was a dinghy, really, nothing at all to get excited about, but then not that common in a backyard in Seven Hills. It was no longer than three metres, made of unvarnished, cracking wood. It had no engine. Coils of rope sat on its floor, dried pieces of seaweed interwoven with the fibres.

‘How long since she's seen water?'

‘I dunno,' I said nonchalantly. ‘Be good to get rid of it.'

‘Don't you reckon we could have some fun in her? You ever been fishing?'

I had, once. Sat on some slippery beach rocks with Pa. I had been squeamish about threading the bait onto the hooks and had insisted Pa do it for me. Every time he cast out for me, and handed over the rod, I would feel a light pull on the end of my line and I'd reel it in frantically, only to find an empty hook and sinker at the end. Pa would then have to thread on another piece of bait. Five times this was repeated before Pa lost his temper and told me to stop being a baby and thread it my damn self. Another fisherman overheard and befriended me, baiting my hook for me for the rest of the day while Pa sat there sullen, refusing to speak. We went home empty-handed.

I tried to dampen some of Mal's excitement before it became an idea needing acquiescence. ‘I don't really like fishing.'

‘Yeah, but you ain't been with me, have you, bro?'

That was true. It piqued my curiosity. ‘Why?'

‘What d'ya mean,
why
? I make it fun, don't I, eh? You'll see.'

I wasn't used to the company of adults other than my mother but I liked Mal, and the fact he never questioned me. He was just like a big kid, only without any of the teasing. As a treat, he'd brought over
Rocky
on video. It wasn't a film that had ever interested me but I enjoyed the camaraderie that it encouraged between Mal and me. I knew this was Mal's attempt to bloke-ify me; show me films that were supposed to appeal to real men. It did appeal to me but not as Mal had expected it would. Before we went to bed, we shared a hot chocolate in the kitchen.

‘So you like my mum, then?'

‘Yeah, buddy, for sure, eh? She's a pretty cool woman, you know that?'

‘My mum works really hard, she's always working.'

‘Yeah, I know.'

‘It would be nice for her not to have to worry about me any more, wouldn't it? It would be good for her to have someone do nice things for her every once in a while. She deserves that.'

‘I'll try, bro, hey? Honest I will.'

I knew not to go near my mother's bedroom when Mal announced it was time for bed. Mal and I stood side by side in the bathroom, looking at our reflections as we brushed our teeth. Mal had taken his shirt off already and I was envious of his hairiness, wished I could develop faster than it was taking. I took my time to floss after Mal had left the room, went to the toilet, cleaned out the wax from my ears. I went to my mum's room to say goodnight to Mal, who was lying beneath the sheets, his arms behind his head, his naked torso on display.

‘'Night, Mal.'

‘Yeah, 'night, buddy. Sleep time. Eh, Tom?'

‘Yeah?'

‘I like spending time with you, eh? You're a cool kid.'

‘Goodnight, Mal.'

I lay in bed reading a Clint Eastwood biography Mal had found in a second-hand store and not long after I switched off the overhead light, I heard my mother come home.

She showered before climbing into bed, then again I heard the sounds of Mum making love to Mal. Mal's voice was different in these moments – soft, barely a whisper, full of tenderness. As I listened to their motion increase, heard my mother's cries of delight, my mind turned to the magazines up in the rafters, and how close I'd come to being caught by Mal. I thought it would be better to start leaving the roller door down if I was going to be spending more time up there.

I heard the adults making tea in the kitchen.

‘Steve came in again tonight,' Mum sighed.

‘Any trouble?'

‘Nah, but he sure is one persistent little bugger.'

‘Needs a good smack in the head, eh?'

‘He's all right, just got the wrong end of the carrot is all. Called me every name under the sun but I just told him I'd made my mind up and he'd better just get over it . . . How was Tom tonight?'

‘Great. You've got a great kid there, Lana. Real smart, he is.'

‘I still worry . . . You know . . . you don't have to do this for me, or us. He's used to being on his own, you don't need to spend your time here with him when you must have better things to do.'

‘I think Steve's getting to you, eh? I don't do it for you,' Mal said.
Heh heh heh
. ‘Sweet that you think that though, eh? Don't you like me coming 'round?'

‘Yeah, yeah, of course I do. We've been friends at the pub for yonks but I dunno, when you bring that into my home, it changes everything. Tom's still just a kid and I don't want him thinking . . . I just don't want him hurt. Or to see me hurt. I need to protect him and I just don't know where all this is going. I think about Steve and I think . . .'

‘Oh fuck him, eh? It's not about him. And as for Tom, I ain't gonna do nothin' to him. He's a mate of mine. A cool character, eh, our Tom? I get bored at home, eh, and watching you work ain't that fun. Well, you know what I mean, it's too much of a tease and I get all barred up just watching you.'

‘Mal! Watching me pull beers? Get out of it!'

‘Watching you doing anything, eh?'

They did not speak for a while. The last thing I heard before drifting off to exhausted, longed-for sleep, was Mal saying: ‘Thought I might take him up the coast, fishing in his boat. Boys' weekend. Would you be okay with that?'

A
fter leaving Hanna, I went home for a nap before getting ready for dinner with my mother. We'd agreed to go out for an expensive meal as a bon voyage for my upcoming trip. Lana had insisted it would be her shout and had chosen the restaurant. I'd come dressed in my only suit, returning her effort and wanting her to know how much it meant to me. But I sat at the restaurant on the harbour watching minute after minute tick by, and a full one hour after our reservation time she was still nowhere to be seen. Texts and messages had gone unanswered, as had calls to her home phone, which appeared to be disconnected. I was furious but concerned enough to investigate further. It was probably all a stupid mistake; she was off drunk somewhere, having forgotten the date. I decided to take my revenge by travelling all the way to her apartment and if I got there and saw she was out, sit and wait patiently for a confrontation.