Letters to Leonardo (7 page)

I spend the rest of the day eating chocolate ice-cream, doodling on my scrap paper sketchpads and making lists:

WHY FIND MUM?

•  She’s my mother.

•  Need to know why she left me.

•  Need to know if she still wants to be my mother.

•  Need to know where I come from.

•  Need to know why Dave lied.

•  Need my mother in my life.

•  Need to know if she still loves me.

WHERE TO LOOK FOR HER

•  Psych hospital (Been there, didn’t enjoy that!)

•  Old school friends

•  Relatives (like Aunt Alexa)

•  Last resort – Dave!

POSSIBLE OUTCOMES OF FINDING HER

•  She won’t want to know me.

•  She will want to know me.

•  She comes to live with me and Dave.

•  I go and live with her.

Conclusion: I’ll go crazy if I don’t find out the truth.

I eat more ice-cream and think about what to do next.

Troy races in after school, backpack flung over his shoulder.

“What’s she like?” he asks.

“Dunno, never saw her.”

“Well, that’s good isn’t it? Maybe she’s all better?’

My voice is flat – empty like Barry Hill. “She wasn’t there. Nobody was. Place is closed down.”

“What?”

“Nobody lives there any more.”

Troy laughs. “You’re kidding.”

I wish I was.

“So, what are you going to do?” Troy slaps his backpack at my feet.

“Dunno.”

“There must be some other way to find her.”

“Maybe. Mum had a sister, you know? My aunt Alexa.”

“Why don’t you just ring her?”

“Can’t! I don’t even know her last name – even though she’s my aunt. She just sort of disappeared out of my life after we moved – apart from the annual birthday card.”

Troy frowns. He picks up Mum’s card. “Maybe you can find your mum through her art.”

“How?” Uluru jumps out of the thin gold border – so real you can almost touch it. I wonder what it was like for Mum, living with someone like Dave who thinks that painting is something you only do when you want to sell your house. Is that why she left him/us? Because Dave was aesthetically challenged?

“You’re going to have to talk to your dad,” says Troy. “He must know more about her.”

“Yeah, but how do I get him to talk?”

“Tell him the truth – that you know your mum’s not dead.”

“I don’t think I’m ready for that.”

Troy stands firm. “You have to, mate. It’s the only way.”

I bite my lip.

“Want me to stick around while you do it?” asks Troy.

“No, thanks. This is between me and Dave.”

“Let us know how it goes.” Troy picks up his pack and strolls out the door.

Now that I’ve made the decision, I can’t wait for Dave to get home. I’ve hardly spoken to him for the last few days. He’s going to be so rapt that I’m actually talking to him again.

Until he finds out what I have to say.

I’m waiting at the kitchen table when Dave walks in the door. He grabs the milk from the fridge and sits across from me. We don’t really look at each other. We’re like two people posed to look a certain way – to give a certain impression. Father and son carefully arranged to appear as if everything’s okay between them.

It makes me think of the way the angels look at each other in Leonardo’s
Baptism of Christ
. And I realise how important art is to me – it’s such a huge part of my life – and how totally different I am to Dave.

I slouch in my chair, trying to fit my legs in the space between the seat and the floor.

Dave’s hands are joined in front of him, resting on the table.

“So how was your day, Matt?”

He has on his “probing father” look – the one where he tries to see the inside workings of my brain.

How can he act as if nothing has happened between us? As if I haven’t been ignoring him for the last few days?

I plan to play his “patient listener” game – get
him
to admit the truth. But I can’t hold it all in any longer. I blurt it straight out. “I know Mum’s not dead!” There, how does that bombshell grab you?

It grabs him – his face goes rigid – fragile and stiff like clay slurry after it dries. Is he going to pretend he didn’t hear me? He twitches in his seat. He blinks. I read a body language article once that said people who blink when they’re talking to you aren’t telling the truth.

I look him right in the eye. The anger keeps me cold. “No more lies, Dave. Don’t say anything, if you’re not going to tell me the truth.”

“Uh …”

“I need the truth.”

Suddenly, he slumps over the table and starts to cry. His “Honest Dave” face crumples red. “Smiling Dave” cries loud, gulping sobs.

I’ve never seen Dave – Dad – cry. It melts a sliver of ice inside me, but I have to stand firm. Have to find out.

Now I feel like he’s the kid. I hate seeing him this upset and I want to tell him it’s all right – only it’s not. I don’t trust myself to speak – don’t know what to say.

Then I get mad all over again. Is this Dave’s way of avoiding the whole issue? Is this his way of getting out of telling me the truth?

I fling back my chair. “Can’t you be straight with me for once?”

I get to the doorway.
I’m
crying now, red-hot anger pouring out of me like volcanic perspiration.

“Matt, wait!”

“Why? So you can tell me more lies?”

“We need to talk.”

I go back to my chair, but I don’t sit down again. I stand over him. I want him to feel as small as I felt inside when I discovered the truth. “Bit overdue, don’t you think?”

He nods. “I don’t blame you for being angry, Matt. Every day I’ve had to keep this from you. Every day it’s sickened me. But I had no choice.”

I snort. “Had no choice! You’re always saying, ‘We all have choices in life’. Isn’t that what your beloved Rosenbaum says? That’s what you’re always telling me, anyway.”

Dave’s face is pale, his eyes unusually bright. His voice is soft, not so certain. “You were little. It was for your own good. I had to protect you.”

“From what? My own mother!”

He seems to have shrunk in his chair, like everything has drained out of him and been replaced by fear.

“What was she, an axe murderer?”

“No, but–”

“So, why did I need protecting?”

“You were just a small child–”

“Yeah, well, in case you didn’t realise, I haven’t been a small child for years. What did she do that was so bad?”

“Sit down, Matt. We need to talk this through.”

“I’d rather stand.”

“Suit yourself.”

Unexpectedly, I’m hit by the urge to throw up. Can I handle the truth? What if my mother didn’t want me? What if she never wanted me?

I make it to the toilet just in time, kneel over the bowl and heave my guts out.

Dave comes to check on me. “Are you okay?”

“What do you reckon?”

The door squeaks as he leans against it. “We can do this another time, Matt.”

“No.” I feel more vomit rising.

“I’ve got something to show you. It’s in the office safe.” Dave jiggles his car keys nervously. “I’ll be back in about half an hour. We’ll talk then, okay?”

I nod. The front door slams and the car starts. What’s so important that he keeps it in the office safe? What’s so important, he never wanted me to know about it?

Dear Leonardo
,

My life is layers of paint. Things keep getting peeled back and it’s hard to know what’s going to be revealed next
.

Lies, lies and more lies?

Not sure where this journey’s going to end but I have a bad feeling about what happens next
.

Still, you and me, Leo, we have to know the truth – it’s who we are
.

Not sure Mrs D is going to get this letter either
.

Matt

Dave walks into my room, carrying a black folder in his hand. “You think this is my fault, don’t you?” he says.

“Isn’t it?”

“Maybe. You figure it out.”

Dave drops the folder on the bed in front of me and leaves. Inside is a newspaper article from the
Denyer Times
. I vaguely remember living in a place called Denyer before we moved here.

It’s a front-page story with a photo of me, aged about five. I’ve seen one just like it in Dave’s photo album – the one that doesn’t have pictures of Mum.

A huge headline screams,
Mother Abandons Son in Shopping Centre
.

It can’t be true, can it?

A 28-year-old woman was taken into custody today after abandoning her son in the Denyer Shopping Centre. A witness said she saw the woman leave her young boy on a wooden seat and walk off. “I thought she was just going to look in a shop window,” said jeweller Marg Johnson. “I was on my own and couldn’t leave my store. Some customers came in and I got distracted. After they’d left, I looked out and saw that poor little boy still sitting there. No sign of the mother.”

I start to sweat. Memories and images rush through my head like a high-speed slide projector showing snapshots of my life.

I’m a little boy again, watching Mum walk away. I’m not afraid at first. But then she doesn’t come back. A big lady with blond hair takes me into her shop. She offers me a lolly, but I don’t want it. I want Mummy.

I want to stop reading but I can’t.

Police sources say the woman has been charged and will undergo psychological evaluation pending her trial. The boy’s father was too distraught to comment
.

Suddenly, I remember things about Mum: the invisible perfume aura that floated around her. When I was little that sweet smell made my tongue tingle.

I loved the way she smelled, and her softness when she cuddled me on her lap.

That day she took me into so many shops, buying me things I didn’t even ask for. We went to a shoe shop. I tried on blue runners and she bought heaps. The shop assistant packed them into little yellow cardboard boxes and put them into bags. There were too many to carry so we left a box at the shop.

Mum bought me chocolate ice-cream – lots of it. I felt sick.

“Sit down and rest while I look in some shops.”

I was happy sitting on the seat but she never came back. A police officer took me to a police station. Dave came to collect me. He’d been running – he hugged me tight, his face was wet against mine.

I turn the pages. The more I read, the more I remember.

Mother Has a History of Abandonment

… Mrs Pearson, a neighbour of the accused, stated in court that this isn’t the first time the boy has been left. “Six months ago, I heard crying next door. The front door was locked. I broke in through the side window. That poor boy was all alone, crying for his mummy. I had to call the father home from work. That woman didn’t turn up till two days later.”

I remember; I remember falling asleep on the couch and waking up. I walked through the house, but I couldn’t find Mum. I remember Mrs Pearson cuddling me till Dad came home.

Senior Constable Smithers, a police officer involved in the shopping centre case said, “The mother was cautioned when the boy was just two years old for leaving him in a locked car outside a supermarket. She has a history of this type of behaviour and it seems to be escalating.”

The last article shows Mum crying on the steps of the courthouse. There’s a paragraph underneath the picture.

After a psychological evaluation of the mental state of the accused, Dave Hudson has been awarded full custody of his only son. The boy’s mother, Zora Hudson has been granted supervised access
.

Psychological evaluation? Mental state? Supervised access? What does all that mean? There’s nothing in any of the papers to say what happened to Mum after that.

It must have been after the court case that Dave told me Mum had died that day at the shopping centre – the last time I saw her.

I lie on my bed and focus on a spider crawling across the ceiling. I’m staring at it when Dave comes in and sits on the bed next to me. “Are you okay?”

I can’t stop shaking. Guess it must be shock – the teachers talked to us about that in Phys Ed.

“Are you okay, Matt?”

The words creep out of my mouth. “Think so. I’ve been remembering stuff.”

Dave puts his hand on my shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault, you know.”

“No?”

“She couldn’t cope. She didn’t dump you because she didn’t love you. She just couldn’t handle life.”

“Don’t think I can either, right now.”

“Don’t be hard on yourself, Matt. This is a lot to deal with.”

You’re telling me?

Dave puts a hand on my shoulder. “I understand about the water tank now. What you did wasn’t right, but I understand why you did it.”

I shrug his hand away. “Yeah! Well, I still don’t understand what
you
did. She was
my
mother!”

“I’m sorry I lied to you, Matt. I really thought it was best.”

The problem is, Dave, you just kept lying.

I turn away from him and put my hands over my ears.

Dave leaves me lying on my bed with the black folder that tells me so much, but answers so little.