Tom Houghton Read online

  ‘That’s just nonsense,’ she said. ‘Of course you do. You’re my handsome leading man – you deserve all of the presents in the world.’

  ‘But how can we – ?’

  ‘Now you listen to me clearly, Tom Houghton. Stop worrying. All right? I missed your last birthday and I can’t forgive myself – I hate myself for that. And this is just presents, you know? This is just a small way for me to show you how sorry I am for going away for so long. I want you to know that I am here for you, and always will be. I love you, okay? I love you more than life itself. Now, leave that last present and get ready for the movies, we’re going to have a wonderful day.’

  I wanted to tell her that I forgave her, that I understood what one of her spirals meant, that she went away to get better. But the truth was she had left me with just Pa. The other times Mum had gone away, Ma had been here and we’d gone to the movies just like we always did, but with just Pa things were different. Prickly. I’d cried myself to sleep on my last birthday and even when Mum came home, she hadn’t said she was sorry to have missed it.

  But this year things would be different. Our Sundays were cast in stone now. Mum only ever took a late shift on a Sunday. Up for breakfast, a quick tidy of the house; make Pa’s lunch and leave it in the fridge. Then we’d head straight to the cinema and stay there all day. Mum packed sandwiches for us, and soft drinks, corn she’d popped the evening before. Usually she made us fresh cupcakes but, as it was my birthday, we’d take some of my cake. White chocolate because she knew it was a weakness.

  I usually hated shuffling during movies (mine or anybody else’s) but that day, I couldn’t keep still. There was something about the mysterious present that kept drawing my thoughts back to it. I tortured myself with that one unopened gift for the rest of the day and I loved the power it held over me; it let me stretch out my birthday for as long as possible, like those kids who made the chocolates from their Easter Show bags last till August.

  The images on the screen flickered almost as fast as my mind. Maybe the present was a collection of posters, all rolled and stood on end? Different lengths would create the illusion of it being oddly shaped. No matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t any closer to working out what it might be, and I found it virtually impossible to concentrate on the Doris Day and Rock Hudson double feature and even harder to enjoy The African Queen because I’d seen it before, though not on the big screen. I should’ve been excited to see it, as Katharine Hepburn was the best and my all-time favourite. She’d been Ma’s too. Hepburn exuded Hollywood royalty – so enigmatic, so cool. And besides, with so many Oscar nominations, everyone knew no one would ever catch her – it was validation that she was the best and would always remain it. Ever since Ma and Mum took me to see On Golden Pond when I was eight or so, I’d painstakingly tracked down as many Hepburn films as I could find. I scoured the television guide searching for late-night showings then carefully programmed the VCR to start recording ten minutes before each one. Sometimes I was so worried about the timer function not working that I would set my alarm and get up to press the record button myself. I’d exhausted the local video shops of her films and had called several of the large wholesale warehouses looking for the rarer ones. In all, I owned copies of twenty-six Hepburn films and I reckon I’d watched each one three times. Mum wanted to know what my favourite was but it was impossible to say, I couldn’t narrow it down. Of the earlier ones, I liked Bringing Up Baby, Woman of the Year and The Philadelphia Story, but saying one was a favourite was taking it too far. One of my birthday books was a biography of Katharine Hepburn and I couldn’t wait to get started on it.

  I managed to convince Mum we shouldn’t stay for the fourth movie and she finally understood I was fidgeting over what lay in store for me. When we got home, I couldn’t contain myself any longer, not even staying outside to open the gate for Mum to drive in the old Holden. I bounded up the front steps, raced into my room and ripped apart the paper like a famished explorer sitting down to his first home-cooked meal in months.

  My heart burst with appreciation. Mum had tracked down a genuine movie set prop from Hollywood. A ceramic vase used in a scene for Now, Voyager as proven by a black and white still from the film with it circled in the background. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t familiar with the film as I read the certificate of authenticity – I had a piece of cinema history right here in my own bedroom! Howard Carter could not have felt more enamoured of one of his finds.

  Mum left for work around five and though she’d prepared our dinner before leaving, I was in no mood to eat – there was so much to do. I took a deep breath, sat down on my bed and thought things through methodically. If I started with the cards, and updated my collection accordingly, then at least I could put those aside and move on to the magazines and books before bed. This was the right order to absorb things in.

  I pulled the shoeboxes out from under my bed and lined them up in front of me. I peeled the plastic away from one of my new packs of index cards and deeply inhaled their fresh woody scent. New stationery gave me a feeling of purpose. I got my notepad and opened it to its waiting page. First on the list was Marlee Matlin, a new young star getting rave reviews for her debut role in Children of a Lesser God and touted as being yet another next big thing. I wrote the actress’s name in black pencil above the double red line at the top of a fresh card. Underneath that, in grey pencil, if she had an alternate spelling or a different birth name I would write that too, like Cher’s Cherilyn Sarkisian, or Lauren Bacall’s Betty Joan Perske. On the first blue line of the card I wrote: Children of a Lesser God. Next, I went to the shoebox labelled to be added and pulled out a small envelope marked M. In it was a pile of identically sized pictures (four centimetres by four centimetres) I’d clipped from magazines, and I rummaged through until I found the image of the young actor. I glued the clipping to the reverse, top-right corner of the index card, marked off Marlee Matlin’s name in my notepad and placed the card before Walter Matthau in the M–Q shoebox.

  This was one part I didn’t enjoy, catching up on old information that sat waiting in my notepad for a new supply of index cards. I closed the notepad and chose instead to open one of my birthday movie magazines. There, on the inside cover, was an advertisement for Hannah and Her Sisters and I spotted something I’d previously not known. Carrie Fisher was listed as one of the stars, so I reached for the D–F shoebox, found her card and added a new title to her growing list of credits.

  This was the most perfect birthday. My mother and I were the luckiest people in the country. Mum protected me from the world outside our cocoon. Though we lived in my grandfather’s modest fibro cottage in the western Sydney suburb of Seven Hills, I hadn’t once thought of it as quaint or common. Mum told me her mother had seen the Queen of England ride through the centre of town on the back of an open train, waving to thousands of school children holding tiny British and Australian flags. Imagine that, she would say when she retold the story after getting home late from one of her shifts, the Queen right here in Seven Hills! And she’d wave just like the Queen had, sometimes ducking into her room to don a long white glove, which she only ever used for that purpose. Not bad for a little old Seven Hills girl! Mum would exclaim over events in her life both large and small. She spoke of the Seven Hills of Rome as though she’d spent a summer exchange there. It was not until I came across Summertime (Hepburn in one of her first colour films) that I realised Mum had never actually left Australia but had merely been relaying scenes. She’d even described the smell of the canal water in Venice.

  But Pa’s block was one of the few large ones on the north side of the station and he’d transformed the backyard into an immense vegetable garden and orchard. As Housing Commission houses around us sprouted like teenage stubble, we felt positively baron-like on our little farm. Newman Street was where lots of grandparents lived, and me and my mum.

  I heard my grandfather shuffling up the hall on his way to bed.

  ‘It’s late,’ he grumbled. ‘
You’ve got school.’

  ‘I know, Pa,’ I said without looking up from my magazines. ‘I’ll just go through one more.’

  ‘It’s not healthy,’ Pa said dismissively. ‘A boy in a cinema all day with his mother, then locked in his room. What sort of birthday is that? Where were your friends today? Where was the party?’

  ‘I don’t like parties,’ I said, eyes still on the magazine. I had heard it all before. Though suddenly it was too difficult to concentrate and I found myself stuck on the fourth page, re-reading the same information. I waited patiently for my grandfather to move on but, when he didn’t, I flicked the page, pretending to be distracted.

  ‘In my day, boys didn’t lock themselves in their room all night.’

  ‘There’s no lock on my door,’ I said daringly, just above a whisper but then added under my breath: ‘unfortunately.’

  ‘I was a strapping young lad at your age. I spent my time outdoors, running around with my pals, building things. We were active.’

  ‘My mind’s active, Pa. You always said an active mind was –’

  ‘You need to trim down a bit too, Tommy. I know how kids can be, it won’t do you no good because your Mum’s never gonna be at school to stick up for you.’

  ‘Goodnight, Pa.’

  ‘Sometimes you should listen to me. I know you think I’m just an old fuddy-duddy but I’ve lived my life, Tommy, and you haven’t even begun living yours. There’s more to life than just . . . Hollywood.’

  ‘Okay, Pa.’

  Pa began to move along the hallway but stopped almost comically. ‘I got you something too, you know?’

  I momentarily dropped my annoyance. ‘You did?’

  ‘Of course I did. We may not always see eye to eye, you and me, but I’m still your grandfather.’

  ‘I know that. I know you love me, Pa.’

  Pa hesitated. His eyes were permanently glassy, which made it difficult to gauge his mood. ‘When I was a young’un, I loved to stretch out my birthdays as long as I could. Made them feel real special.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I managed a chuckle. ‘Me too.’

  ‘So I’m gonna give you my present tomorrow, before school. Now get to sleep before your mum gets in from work or we’re both gonna get our hides tanned.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’ll turn off the light for you, then?’

  ‘It’s my birthday . . . I’m not sleeping in here tonight.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Pa . . . it’s my birthday.’

  The old man shook his head, turned out of my room and continued his way up the hall. I couldn’t understand how he so easily made me feel lesser; the weight of the unsaid.

  • • •

  I heard Mum come home a few hours later. She was giggling and whispering in response to a stranger’s voice – deep and seductive. Wet kissing sounds came from the living room and I pulled my pillow tight over my ears but the sounds made it through. I tried to think of the rapids scene in The African Queen and work out how they’d done it. Not impressive by today’s standards, my mother had said, but for its time . . . The bedroom door opened. I did my best to feign sleep.

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘What?’ the man asked.

  ‘My son . . .’

  ‘It’s all right, I’ll carry him back to his own bed. Where is it?’

  ‘After – after the bathroom.’

  I shut my eyes tight and released a light moan, trying to make my body sleep-floppy.

  The man came back to the bedroom door and sighed. ‘There’s crap all over his bed. Should I move it?’

  My heart froze. He couldn’t touch it, any movement would make it all out of order and it’d take hours and hours to put it right again. I considered jumping out from under the bedding to leap towards the door but then they’d know I was awake and I’d be forced into my room and I didn’t feel like that tonight. I decided to take the gamble; blood pumped fiercely through my body. I moaned again and waited to hear what would happen next.

  ‘We’d better not. He gets real . . . real . . . tetchy.’

  ‘Come on, Lana, come on! We need to do something, I need to be with you.’ His voice sounded whiny.

  ‘Follow me,’ she said and giggled again, ‘we’re going on a little adventure, big man.’

  I listened for the squeak of the back door hinges, the overture to another of my mother’s moonlit trysts. Though I was still too young to understand the intricacies of what was happening, I’d certainly watched enough movies to know what was to follow, had asked my mother enough questions over the years. There were many films where I’d leant over to whisper hotly in her ear: Why are they taking their clothes off? Why do people kiss? Why is he lying on top of her like that? What is syphilis?

  Now I was twelve, things would start changing for me too, Mum had said. My body was going to develop into a man’s. In the darkness of the room, I held my hand in front of my face. It was small and childlike. I imagined my stubby fingers long and thick like a man’s. If they were large and impressive, I could hold a movie star’s face in them and there, up on the big screen, they would look strong and masculine. I couldn’t sleep even if I’d wanted to. I started worrying about my mother out the back being eaten alive by mosquitoes, just like the swarm in The African Queen. There was Pa’s promised present too, not to mention how many new entries I still had to make on my index cards. I had once heard someone on television say that if you weren’t asleep after fifteen minutes of trying you should get up, do something, then try again later.

  Silently, so as not to wake Pa or alert my mother, I made my way to the bathroom, which had a window overlooking the backyard. I climbed on top of the toilet lid to peer out at the old lounge dumped in the middle of the lawn and caught my first glimpse of the strange man. His pants were down to his ankles and his bottom was exposed to the night sky. It tightened and relaxed, tightened and relaxed. This was the first real-life person I had ever seen naked, aside from Mum. He kept up a regular rhythm and as I listened carefully, my mother’s pumped sighs were carried to me on the evening breeze. Her fingers squeezed tight into the flesh of the man’s bum and she groaned once, loudly. My mother was a movie star, making love to a dark stranger on a warm November night! Though there was barely a visible moon, the night was lit with stars. The man slowly climbed off Mum and stood up to stretch out his limbs. Seeing him there, naked, a matinee idol for her to worship, made me feel funny inside. I watched them both a while longer, sitting side by side on that threadbare couch, passing a bottle back and forth. My mother’s pale flesh glowed. The man looked towards the window where I stood and I did not shift, thinking sudden movement would draw more attention than a silhouette that might or might not be mine. We seemed to lock eyes.

  ‘Maybe I should go,’ the man offered.

  Mum said: ‘If you must.’

  I hurried back to my mother’s bed and lay there wondering when she would be climbing in next to me and whether the man would want to lie in there with us too.

   Three

  I covered Lana’s bare arse with a sheet and went into her laundry to gather some cleaning materials. It took fifteen minutes to make the pool of vomit at the side of her bed disappear and during that time she shuffled about but did not wake. The room was dark and cloying, a vague scent of cigarettes suggesting she was back on her three- or four-a-day habit and I prayed she was not smoking them in bed. I remember a call for my pa when I was about six; one of his sisters had died that way, bringing the house down around her ears.

  Though it was fast approaching midday, I knew Lana would not be awake for some time, so I took the chance to tidy her flat. The kitchen was full of half-eaten plates of food and her aversion to rinsing and reusing glasses had clearly not abated; there must have been thirty or more, lined up next to the sink like soldiers heading home, fatigued from battle. She’d left an ashtray on the coffee table, her butts candy-striped with lipstick, even though she knew I was coming and this could only mean she was daring
me to take her to task on it which, naturally, I would refuse to do. Food and ash disposed of, I stacked everything in the dishwasher, then opened the fridge and threw away the handful of items I found, all of which were well past their best-by dates. I put away the groceries I’d bought for her before she could complain either that I had done so, or that I had purchased the wrong stuff. In the bathroom I collected her piles of dirty clothes and crammed the washing machine with as many as possible, then turned my attention to the shower screen that was white with scum and the drain that was more hair than grate.

  I opened windows and the patio doors, aired her two large rugs over the balcony even though body corporate had banned it and she’d already received one warning for doing so. What were they going to do? Kick her out?

  Things were just about looking normal when I heard her stirring. I had two poached eggs on sourdough toast and a Bloody Mary – extra spice – ready for her by the time she stumbled into the living room. She’d thrown a baggy T-shirt over underwear but nothing else and her hair was teased out in severe angles. I was still not used to the bob my mother had given herself in recent weeks and for a fraction of an instant I thought it wasn’t her. Yesterday’s lipstick was just visible – she wore it even if she wasn’t leaving the house – and her toenails were chipped red.

  ‘Forgot you were coming,’ she mumbled, and reached for the Bloody Mary as though she’d gone to bed knowing it would be waiting when she woke. She took a long gulp and licked the chilli salt from her lips. ‘Would have tidied.’

  ‘As you usually do,’ I goaded, wishing I had not.

  ‘So . . . have you nominated me for mother of the year yet?’

  I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘I don’t mind cleaning up for you, Lana.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, and sat at her kitchen table to begin eating her eggs. They were overcooked, the way she preferred.

  Mother had managed – against the odds – to preserve most of her looks. She certainly did not look sixty-three. Wrinkles had only just begun appearing at the corners of her mouth and eyes but her neck (that classic telltale sign) was wattle-free and her hands were not dotted with liver spots. The blaze of her hair had diminished to a dirty auburn. Despite the state of her apartment, and how she looked first thing in the morning, if ever she came to the theatre or we met during the day, she ensured she was impeccably presented. I marvelled how age had seemed to stretch her sidewards, how her nose had turned more bulbous and bruised. This was not the woman who took me to movies; that spark had long since disappeared.