Henry Hoey Hobson (3 page)

‘Want to play?'

I'd been watching the crazy, inexplicable handball game in the echoing undercroft below our classroom for the best part of five minutes. Instead of answering, I pushed myself to my feet and dusted myself off, quickly doing the maths.

...Five minutes with Sebastian, at the start of lunch break, scouring the boys' toilets for vampires before giving the Preps, Year Ones and Year Twos the all-clear.

...Five minutes to peel and eat the orange and down the vegemite sandwich I'd brought for lunch. (Gotta love the labour-intensive orange. Tomorrow I was bringing two, to help fill in my day.)

...Five minutes trying to make sense of the bizarre game unfolding before me, while the girls danced up a storm at the other end of the schoolyard.

By my reckoning, that still left thirty whole minutes of lunch break to fill in. I felt the braces rasp against my inner lips as I squeezed out a smile. Just a sliver; I didn't want to tempt fate and reopen old wounds.

‘Sure. Thanks.'

The three of them had been playing a fast-moving, round-robin version of handball that I hadn't seen before. It looked like they were making it up as they went – the rules kept changing, without notice, as soon as someone yelled something incomprehensible from the sidelines.

‘With four of us, we could play dunces, if you like.' They looked at me like I'd suggested playing naked. ‘What? You don't like dunces?' I asked.

The mop-headed kid – Joey Castellaro – shrugged. He started bouncing the ball, slowly, not bothering to look, trusting that it would find his hand after each bounce. ‘It's all right. Bit boring, that's all.'

‘I don't mind,' said a voice from behind me. ‘Dunces is fine.'

It was the kid who'd asked me to join in. The name sticky-taped to his desk read
Jironomo Marquez
but Mr Paulson had pronounced it He-RON-o-MO MarKEZ and everyone just called him Hero.

Hero was a pair of front teeth with a little Spanish kid tucked in behind. He didn't look like he was going to grow into those teeth any time soon. But, you know, maybe in time ... maybe if his parents were really tall...

I yanked myself back out of my head – maybe I should get a grip and stop talking to myself when there were other people out there trying to have a conversation with me. And I really shouldn't be staring at anyone's teeth. Not with blue-marble eyes, and a jet-black widow's peak that framed my milk-bottle skin into a pasty heart shape. I really wasn't in any position to be lookist.

Blair Boniface blinked behind his spectacles. ‘I don't mind dunces. We could play that, if you want.' He blinked nervously at Joey. ‘You know, for a change.'

Joey shrugged again. ‘Whatever.'

He sloped back over to the handball court that was painted onto the concrete floor of the undercroft. ‘I'm ace.' He pointed at Jironomo. ‘Hero, you can be king and BB, you're queen.'

‘I guess that makes me dunce.' I didn't mind; it was well within my comfort zone. I ambled over to the dunce's square and was startled by Joey's sudden shout.

‘PURPLE DRAGON!'

The handball hit me square in the sternum, a full-on peg.

Joey Castellaro smiled. ‘I guess that makes you double-dunce, Hobson.'

I rubbed at my chest. OK, so
purple dragon
obviously meant
duck
. Gotcha. ‘Any other local rules I need to know about?'

He shrugged and swaggered back to serve again.

I was ready this time, but it was a regular serve, hard and low. I tapped it back, so that it fell just over the line. It was a good return; he'd never get to it before the second bounce.

‘M-and-Ms!' He slammed it back after the second bounce, catching me off-guard, yet again. ‘Hobson, you're too slow. Triple-dunce!'

I cracked my neck and primed myself for the next round.
M-and-Ms
must allow a double bounce. I was going to get the hang of this if it killed me.

His next serve went to Hero, who batted it to BB. He bounced it to me and I hit it straight back at him. Standard handball. We had a nice little rally going until Joey Castellaro burst into my square screaming ‘GHOSTS!'

I flubbed the return and spun on him. ‘What the hell! What do you think you're doing, Castellaro? Just making it up as you go along?'

BB adjusted his glasses. ‘Well, you can interfere if you say “Ghosts”, just as long as you don't touch the ball.'

‘We thought you knew that,' said Hero. ‘Sorry.'

‘He doesn't know anything,' snorted Joey Castellaro. ‘That's why he's a quadruple-dunce.' He clicked his fingers at BB. ‘Here – give us the ball.'

His attitude was starting to bug me. ‘Why should he? Why can't BB have a serve?'

‘Ace always serves.' He grabbed the ball and shook his head. ‘You really don't know anything about handball, do you, Hobson?'

I looked away, gritting my teeth, totally unprepared for what happened next.

‘PURPLE DRAGON!'

The handball caught me right in the chops, mashing my lips into my braces. I spun and walked away, so that they wouldn't see the tears of pain that had sprung into my eyes. Luckily, the ball had ricocheted off me and rolled up against the wall of the undercroft, so it looked like I was just going to get it. I took my time to pick it up and walk back to a handball court that had gone quiet.

Hero sucked at his teeth. ‘You OK?'

I nodded.

BB blinked at me from behind his glasses. ‘You want a tissue?'

I shook my head.
Please God, don't let them think that I was crying.

‘You sure? 'Cos you got a bit of, uh–' He gestured vaguely at the side of his mouth. ‘A bit of blood, you know, trickling down–'

I wiped the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand and stared down at the bright red streak. My braces might need some adjustment and I wasn't sure if Mum was still friends with the orthodontist who had installed them.

I walked up to Joey Castellaro, slapped the ball into his chest and kept right on walking.

The library loomed before me. I should have thought of that earlier. Burying myself in a book was a far safer option than setting myself up for another ambush on the handball court. I'd had enough blood sports for one day.

‘How was your first day, honey-bun?'

I'd closed my book and tossed it onto the couch as soon as I heard her Hyundai Getz pull into the carport under the house. By the time she'd clickety-clacked up the wooden internal steps, I had summoned my best hangdog expression and slumped back on the couch in the darkened lounge room.

She switched on the overhead fluoro, lighting up her blonde hair like a halo. I quickly dropped my eyes. Looking directly at my mother was dangerous. Like looking into a fire. She could dazzle you without even trying, and I wasn't in the mood to be dazzled.

‘Why on earth are you reading in the dark? We can afford electricity, you know, now that I've got this great new job and all.'

I tried to duck, but my timing was a bit off and the kiss landed on the end of my nose.

She was wearing shiny red platform heels – her good-luck shoes. Most women would get a nosebleed in heels that high. Not my mum; she'd been in them for more than twelve hours straight and wasn't even limping. I had to hand it to her, she was shoe-fit.

‘Thought you were working for commission,' I said.
As usual.

I avoided looking at her and kept my eyes fixed on her shoes. For someone so tiny, she had impressively muscled calves. Like a professional gymnast, or in her case, a professional stilt-walker. And good knees, I'd give her that. No knobbly or wrinkly bits.

‘Oh, don't be such a grumpy-bum.' Her hand ruffled my hair as she swayed past. ‘Do you know what the commission is on a one-point-five-million-dollar apartment?' The ridiculous heels click-clacked into the kitchen.

I closed my eyes and hunkered deeper into the lumpy old couch that had covered more kilometres in the past twelve years than the average family station wagon. ‘Thirty-eight thousand dollars?'

The refrigerator door fwoomped open. ‘Ooh, you made pizza; thanks, hon. Make sure you take those leftovers for lunch tomorrow.' It whoomphed shut again. ‘Thirty-eight thousand dollars – from just one sale. More than I could earn in a year working at that car dealership. Not that I'm complaining, mind you, it got us the Getz.'

‘Mrrgghhh.' I muffled the groan in an old velvet cushion, kept handy for times like these. I didn't want to talk about my mum's lack of career options. I knew, only too well, whose fault that was...

Hello, here's a little surprise for your eighteenth birthday. A baby!
Great news if you don't mind kissing your life goodbye. Farewelling any chance of a university education. See ya later, bozo boyfriend, and bye-bye any hopes for a high-powered career. Hello life as we know it – trying to pay regular bills with irregular commissions while staying one skip ahead of the debt collectors.

I snatched the pillow off my face and sat bolt upright. ‘Wait a minute, Our Lady of Perpetual Succour – it's Catholic. That's private, right? How are we paying for that?'

‘Don't worry about it, hon. The principal said they'll send out an account in a couple of weeks' time–'

‘Mum, why do you keep doing this? You know we don't have any money. I can go to the local state school–'

She emerged from the kitchen, waving my complaints away like she was shooing a fly. ‘It's two buses or forty-five minutes' walk. The Catholic school is forty-five seconds away–'

‘I'm not Catholic.'

‘You weren't Steiner or Lutheran either, and you fitted in perfectly well there.'

That was so wide of the mark, I didn't even bother swinging at it. I didn't fit in, perfectly well, anywhere. Not state, not private. Sometimes I wondered whether that had been a factor in any of our many moves.

She balanced on one leg as she unstrapped first one skyscraper heel, then the other. ‘Hon, we've got a great house, in a nice street, four doors up from a school. What we spend on fees we'll save on travel time, and I won't have to fret about you while I'm at work.'

She tottered over on the loosened platforms and kissed my forehead. ‘Don't worry so much, honey-bun. It'll give you wrinkles.'

With that she stepped down from her teetering heels and settled with a sigh onto the couch beside me. Her blonde halo brushed against my shoulder. I shifted away from the contact.
How's a kid supposed to look up to his mum when she's so much smaller than him?

She shifted position and swung her legs up onto my lap. ‘Want to give me one of those world-famous Henry Hoey Hobson foot rubs while you tell me about your day?'

Her feet were toy. And smelly after twelve hours in patent leather. Crisscrossed with ugly welts where the ridiculous shoes had cut into the skin. That had to hurt.

She passed me the jojoba oil that lived beside the couch. The label claimed it was a natural fungicide and excellent moisturiser. I automatically doused both her feet before remembering that I was supposed to be mad at her.

‘Damn, that feels good.' The tiredness was leaking through into her voice.

I risked a quick look and noticed for the first time that there were worn patches in her smile. A cold hand squeezed my heart and I ducked my head, concentrating on her feet.

‘Only three days in the job and I already have a couple of prospective buyers for that old house overlooking the river.' She poked me with an oily toe. ‘You know the one I mean?'

I nodded. One of our old neighbours had given Mum the listing on her grandfather's deceased estate. It had gotten her the job at a flash inner-city real estate agency. She said the house was our ‘pot of gold', but if you asked me, it looked more like something you'd put a match to...

I'd gone with her to the Open for Inspection on the weekend. A big sign out the front offered prospective buyers the only logical advice it could in the circumstances: ‘Demolish or renovate!' Very helpful, seeing that no-one in their right mind would consider living in it as it was.

She settled back into the lumpy couch with a sigh. ‘Your mumma's going to be a thousandaire by the end of the week, Triple-H. Within six months there'll be real-estate billboards for Lydia Hoey Hobson all over town. It's going to happen, honey-bun. Don't you worry about that.'

She could have saved her breath. I worried about everything. I wasn't sure how much longer she could keep it up. How she could work so hard, stay so optimistic ... After so many setbacks, it was beyond me. It was as if her whole life was a triumph of hope over experience.

She lay still while I worked silently on her poor, battered feet. Then the toe poked me again. ‘So come on, tell me, how was your day?'

Her voice had lost its energy now that she was lying down. She was always joking that she was a shark: she needed to keep moving or she'd die. I didn't want to think of her dying, so I told her that she was more like a fox terrier, running around at a million miles an hour, except when she slept.

I risked another quick glance. She had worked all weekend, left the house an hour before I got up this morning, and arrived home five hours after I had. She looked like she was ready to call it a day. Did I really need to tell her about mine?

I concentrated on working the base of her foot with my thumbs, massaging up and out, pulling on each toe in turn.

This little piggy went to market ... This little piggy stayed home...

Some little piggies didn't get to stay home. Some little piggies got kicked out when they were only eighteen years old and had to fend for themselves and their baby...

This little piggy had roast beef ... And this little piggy had none–

Some little piggies skipped dinner so their baby piggy could take the leftovers to school the next day...

And
this
little piggy–

I squeezed all ten toes and bowed my head. ‘School's OK. It's – you know – school.'

She was right. I did worry too much. But hell, someone had to do the worrying in this family. Which reminded me...

‘Mr Paulson wants your new number, for the school records.'

She was nodding off. ‘I'll phone it in,' she said, struggling to keep her eyes open. ‘In the morning. I've got another early inspection. Remind me.'

It occurred to me then that maybe I should have her number too. So I could contact her, if I needed to. Just in case.

‘If you write it down, I can take it into the office in the morning,' I offered.

She nodded, murmured something that sounded like agreement. I'd have to get up early, to catch her before she left for work, and remind her again.

Her tiny feet lay still in my lap. I gave them one last squeeze, transferred them to the couch and pushed myself to my feet.

I stood there for a moment, watching her sleep. She was like a toy lady doll. More like little Kelly than big sister Barbie. Nothing like a mum, at all.

I didn't know what to do with her, I really didn't. So I flicked off the overhead light and walked blindly into my room.