* * *
—
Some of Clay’s fondest memories of our dad, though, were the nights, just before bed, when Michael wouldn’t believe him. He’d crouch and speak to him quietly: “Do you need to go to the toilet, kid?” and Clay would shake his head. Even as the boy was refusing, he’d be led to the small bathroom, and cracked tiling, and proceed to piss like a racehorse.
“Hey, Penny!” Michael would call. “We’ve got bloody Phar Lap here!” And he’d wash the boy’s hands and crouch again, not saying another thing—and Clay knew what it meant. Every night, for a long, long time, he was piggybacked into bed:
“Can you tell me about old Moon again, Dad?”
* * *
—
Then to us, his brothers, we were bruises, we were beatings, in the house at 18 Archer Street. As older siblings do, we marauded all that was his. We’d pick him up by his T-shirt, right in the middle of his back, and deposit him somewhere else. When Tommy arrived, three years later, we did the same to him. All through Tommy’s childhood, we craned him behind the TV, or dropped him out the back. If he cried he was dragged to the bathroom, a horsey bite at the ready; Rory was stretching his hands.
“Boys?” would come the call. “Boys, have you seen Tommy?”
Henry did the whispering, by the long blond hairs in the sink.
“Not one word, y’ little prick.”
Nodding. Fast nodding.
That was the way to live.
* * *
—
At five years old, like all of us, Clay began the piano.
We hated it but did it.
The MARRY ME keys and Penny.
When we were very young, she’d spoken her old language to us, but only as we went to sleep. Now and then she’d stop and explain something of it, but it left us year by year. Music, on the other hand, was nonnegotiable, and there’d been varying degrees of success:
I was close to competent.
Rory was downright violent.
Henry might have been brilliant, if only he could have cared.
Clay was quite slow to get things, but once he did he would never forget.
Later, Tommy had only done a few years when Penny fell sick, and maybe she was already broken by then, mostly, I think, by Rory.
“All right!” she’d call from next to him, through the barrage of battered music. “Time’s up!”
“What?” He was desecrating that marriage proposal, which was fading by then, and fast, but would never fade completely. “What was that?”
“I said time’s up!”
Often she wondered what Waldek Lesciuszko would have made of him, or more to the point, of her. Where was her patience? Where was the branch of a spruce tree? Or in this place, a bottlebrush or eucalypt? She knew there was a big difference between five boyish boys and a father’s studious girl, but there was still a disappointment, as she watched him swagger away.
For Clay, sitting in the corner of the lounge room was a duty, but one he was willing to endure; he tried at least to try. When he was finished, he’d trail her to the kitchen, and ask his two-word question:
“Hey, Mum?”