Gravity (4 page)

The Subaru barely started. It wound and wound and I thought the battery would give out but she sprang to life at the final turn.

The flat on Mungo Road in Springvale was old and brown. It was clean enough on the outside but it looked like a fossil from the seventies. There were twenty doors – two buildings, two storeys, and five apartments in each. Between the two buildings was a flat concrete car park pocked with oil stains. There were only two vehicles to be seen. One had a flat tyre and a nest of cobwebs over the driver's side mirror. The other was Mum's Corolla. I stepped confidently up the stairwell – with the blackened constellations of discarded gum trampled into its greyness – but my confidence dissolved to fear as I stopped at number seventeen. I stood there for a full minute with my knuckles poised and a zealous pulse in my neck. Might take another half-day to develop the courage to knock. I'd been playing our meeting over in my mind but every time it ran through, it was different. She variously slammed the door in my face, she hugged me, she
screamed and bolted the door, she called the police, jumped like she'd won a game show, spat at me and laughed scornfully, and invited me in like she'd been expecting me. And in every scenario, I just stood there seething with emotion and unable to move or speak. Made mute by equal quantities of rage and relief. Crippled by the desire to hug her locked in battle with the desire to scream a torrent of abuse at her for leaving us.

My knuckles drummed on the security door, almost of their own volition, and I held my breath. I heard traffic on the street and movement. A door opened but it wasn't Mum's door. A face peered at me from behind the mesh in number eighteen. Mum's neighbour.

‘Are you looking for Adrienne?' said a wheezy man's voice.

‘Yes,' I said. I stepped closer to the face behind the security door and a little dog snarled and yapped at me.

‘Gingy, get out of it,' the man said, and the dog obediently retreated, growling indignantly. ‘She's not home yet. She won't be back until six or so.'

‘Oh. Okay. Six o'clock?'

‘She's at work. I can give her a message, if you like.'

Work? Mum had a job? She came to Melbourne for a rest and found herself a job. In one breath I felt betrayed and abandoned, in the next I found comfort in the fact that any job Mum could find wouldn't be as hard as her Splitters Creek life. A job
would
be a rest.

The man opened the security door and the dog went wild again. He pushed it with his ug boot and locked it inside. He looked about twenty. Twenty years and two hundred kilos. He had black shoulder-length hair and a neat black goatee.
His ug boots went all the way to his chunky knees, knees that were all but obscured by the verandah that was his gut.

‘You friend or family?' he asked.

‘Family.'

‘You must be Adam,' he said, and stuck out his hand.

I huffed in disbelief, then nodded. I shook his fat paw. It was warm and swallowed my fingers as though my working hands belonged to a little kid.

‘I'm Kurt,' the big bloke said. ‘Kurt Weston. I'm your mum's . . . neighbour . . . obviously.'

‘How did you . . .'

‘I guessed. Not hard. You and your brother, Simon, and your dad are her favourite topics of conversation.'

I breathed an uneasy laugh. So few words had made it out of Mum's mouth since Si's accident that the thought of her sustaining a conversation seemed weird. Out of character. And she'd talked about us.

I wondered how much she'd told him.

‘Do you want to come in? You're welcome to wait in my pad until your mum gets home.'

‘Nah, it's okay. I've got a few things I should do before I . . .'

‘No worries. Do you want a cuppa before you go? I've just made a brew.'

Kurt didn't smile, but he didn't have to. There was a gregarious warmth that radiated from his sheer mass. There was obviously a big heart in that big body.

‘Thanks. That'd be great,' I said.

Kurt pushed the door open and I followed him inside. The dog growled. Kurt told it to shut up and stepped through
to the kitchen. The dog obliged and sniffed at my boots, its tail ticking with delight.

Kurt's flat was well lit, clean and airy. The gas heater was on and the window was open a crack. The place smelled like fresh coffee with a hint of floral dunny spray. One corner of the living area was dominated by a massive computer set-up and lambswool-lined office chair that had started to sag. The top of the monitor was ornamented with plastic trinkets and fast-food toys of every imaginable colour, and the word DILLIGAF in gold floated around the otherwise black screen.

‘Milk? Sugar?' Kurt asked.

‘Thanks. Milk and three sugars.'

Kurt returned with two huge mugs, handed one to me and ushered me onto a well-worn couch. Gingy the dog jumped up beside me. Kurt growled at it and it sprang to the floor. Kurt's office chair creaked as he lowered himself onto it.

‘Your mum said you're still at school. Year twelve? She said you've got a job lined up in the timber industry. Sawmill?'

‘That's right. I'm not too sure about the mill job.'

‘Yeah?'

‘I reckon I'd get a bit sick of the same thing every day.'

Kurt nodded. ‘Unless you love every little thing about it, it's bound to happen, no matter what your work is.'

‘What do you do?'

‘I'm a software designer. I make programs and fix programs. I work from here most of the time. Work for myself. My own hours.'

‘Sounds great.'

‘Good money. The only hassle is that I don't get out much. Your mum's been good for me.'

Kurt sipped at his coffee. I put my cup to my lips and scalded them. I let the smell warm my insides instead.

I could see why Mum would talk to Kurt. He had a lonely big-hearted energy that reminded me of Mick Fenton's labrador. Tiger lived in a cut-down water tank at the back of the mill. He only came off his shit-caked chain if I let him off. He followed me around at a hobble and I talked to him at length when my work would allow. Some of the most intelligent conversations I'd had at the mill were with Tiger. He was safe and he would always listen.

I wondered how much Mum had changed.

I needed to piss. I propped my cup on the little coffee table beside the couch. I stood up and Gingy got excited and started dancing around my feet. He didn't bark. I asked Kurt if I could use his bathroom. He growled at Gingy and told it to sit down – which the dog did – and pointed to a closed door.

The bathroom was as neat as the rest of the flat. Neat enough to make me sit down to piss. There was a rack full of computer magazines beside the toilet. They were arranged in chronological order with their covers facing the same way. The tiles and the shower screen looked as though they'd been polished. The sink was spotless and I wiped it clean again before I left.

‘You keep a neat house, Kurt.'

‘Have to,' he said. ‘The flat is so small if you leave one thing out of place the whole joint looks like a municipal tip.'

I eventually finished my coffee while Kurt was showing me the program he was working on. It was something to do with the management of huge databases. Kurt was patient
but it was well beyond me. I told him it made my brain hurt and he said he knew the antidote. He sat me on the couch and slipped a DVD of
The Simpsons
into the machine.

‘That's better already,' I said, and Gingy jumped onto my lap. Kurt was ready to bawl it out again and I told him he was fine.

‘
She's
fine,' he said and scruffed the dog's ears. ‘I'll do a bit of work while your head is recovering. Do you want another drink? Something to eat?'

I told him I was fine and he didn't make a fuss. He didn't make a fuss but still managed to make me feel right at home. He tortured his chair again and tapped at the keyboard.

Gingy snored quietly. Kurt worked and wheezed. Slowly the fizzing feeling in my guts grew stronger until the DVD finished and my foot started tapping on the carpet. I'd overstayed my welcome. Mum wasn't coming home. My running away hadn't made it easier for me to think, had only made me feel free for a moment. If anything, I was a bird with a busted wing and I could feel the ground rushing towards me.

It had grown dark outside and Kurt had switched on a lamp over his desk. I couldn't remember him doing that.

I thought about driving home. I could pull up at four in the morning and start work the same day. I'd only missed one day. I'd walk down to the police station and hand my licence in and Cappo would frown.

There was a knock at Kurt's door and Gingy scared the life out of me as she sprang, barking, from my lap. I stood up, my heart almost buzzing and my breath coming and going in noisy grabs.

It was a woman at the door. Gingy recognised the voice and her barking turned feverish with excitement until the woman said hello to her. I couldn't see the woman's face but she spoke to Kurt like they were mates. Her voice was soft but confident.

She
had
changed.

‘Do you want to come in for a minute,' Kurt said, ‘meet a friend of mine?'

I dusted the dog hair from my lap. Kurt flicked the light on. He was smiling and the woman followed him inside.

‘Adam, this is my neighbour, Adrienne. Adrienne, this is Adam.'

I stood and Mum crossed her arms.

She nodded, her lips drawn and smileless. She wore a blue uniform dress with her favourite old jumper pulled over the top. Her hair was pulled back in a savage ponytail.

‘Thought it looked like Bullant's car down there,' she said. ‘Where's the ute?'

My heart was spanking at my ribcage and there was nothing I could do or say to stop it. In one breath – and without a greeting – Mum had sensed trouble. Any wafer of happiness she may have felt in seeing me had been crushed by the disappointment she knew would follow.

I wouldn't disappoint her there and then. Not with Kurt as witness.

‘The ute's at home.'

‘Did Bully come with you?'

I shook my head. ‘We swapped cars.'

Mum nodded, turned to Kurt and forced a smile that
looked more like a snarl. ‘Thanks,' she said. ‘Thanks for looking after him.'

With that, Mum slipped past the big man and through the door. The security screen slammed, and Kurt and I both jumped.

Kurt rolled his mouth into a puzzled smile, and shrugged.

‘Don't worry about it,' I said. ‘Went better than I thought it might.'

Kurt's body pulsed with a stifled laugh.

I shook his hand and let myself onto the balcony.

‘Good luck,' he whispered through the security mesh.

‘Thanks.'

I stood there for a minute and Kurt quietly closed his door.

I was ready to run again. Ready to jump back in Bully's Subaru and drive. I didn't need Mum's shit. What had I been expecting? Sanctuary? A pat on the head and a ‘good to see you'?

I wouldn't run home. Not back to that soul-destroying mess.
I
needed a rest from
my
life.

I'd have to run somewhere new.

‘Well,' Mum shouted from inside her flat, ‘are you coming in or what?'

Mum's flat lacked the warmth and comfort of Kurt's. It was clean but it smelled stale and airless. There were no trinkets or neat stacks of magazines. No signs of life.

‘Nice flat,' I said.

Mum scoffed. ‘It's horrible. It's like a prison cell without the bars.'

‘It's not that bad.'

‘It's nothing to look forward to.'

Mum made us cups of tea and turned on the gas wall heater. We eventually warmed: on the inside, the outside and to one another. There was so much that had to be said but neither of us was brave enough to take the plunge, so we filled the silence with talk about the weather, Mum's new job as a machinist in Essendon and the other tenants in her block.

‘The worst ones are those bloody Asians,' she said. ‘They come over here and take all our jobs. They have no respect for us real Australians.'

Mum's face had flushed. She clenched her jaw and for a moment was somebody else. I didn't know her. With those few words she sounded more like a Splitters Creek local than I ever remembered.

In Splitters Creek, hating things was an art form. It defined your place to sit in the pub. Even if you put aside family grievances, there was still plenty of hatred. The guys who played Australian Rules hated the guys who played League. The guys from the National Parks office hated wild cats and dogs. The farmers hated the weather and the wombats. The alternatives from Hargate hated the loggers and the government and the feelings were mutual . . . on both counts. There was always something or someone to gripe about, but in Springvale Mum was lost.

There was no Tori to hate here. No obvious little kids. No Simon, no Dad, no me. In this new world, it seemed, she needed to find new things to despise.

I watched her ranting and I could see I'd inherited a lot
of things from her. I shared her strong chin and her brown eyes. Before her hair went grey I could find strands of it in her brush that looked exactly like mine but were twelve inches long. I'd inherited a lot from her, but I prayed I hadn't inherited her narrow mind.

Once she had a good head of steam, she banged on about anything and everything but still managed to say nothing of importance. She was like a bar rat in conversation with herself.

I sat at her tiny kitchen table, nodding and interjecting when I thought the time was right, and I could see how much she'd changed. I remembered her teaching me songs and dancing with her in the lounge. I remembered that she used to lie with me on my bed and read to me. Bible stories, Dad's pulp Westerns and trucking magazines,
New Idea
and anything else we could lay our hands on. I remembered the solace in her tight hugs when I had nightmares.