The Good Parents (18 page)

The drive-in had closed even before his parents came to live here. For years his father used to photograph it at different
times of the day or the year, but then he lost interest. He said it had become a great Australian cliché.

For Magnus the drive-in wasn’t a cliché, it was part of his life, already turning into memory. It was part of a composition.
He had an idea for a video clip called
Six Thousand and One Nights in Warton
. That was about how long he would have spent here – his whole life – when he left. Everything would go into it one day. Samples
of old film themes, cars horns, road trains, barking dogs, show day. Crows, crickets, the school bell, the radio in the Lucky,
all the background static that you didn’t notice anymore. Bits of music that his father used to play and his photos of the
drive-in. The sound of bike tyres over gravel. Everything flowing together, flowing forward.

It was because he’d be leaving in two years and five months that he was able to see the drive-in as poetic. All his time here
now was a sort of goodbye. One day, he knew, he’d be glad of his small-town background, it would be part of whatever he did,
whatever it was that would make him famous. A hell of a lot of musicians in America came from small towns.

He whistled and Winnie rushed out to him, grinning, her snout sandy, her ears lopsided. It was like looking after a little
kid.

Whenever he set off to town he felt a faint excitement stir deep inside him. It was sexual. There was a chance that he might
see a girl he liked. That is, Brooke Lester. Even now when it was nearly dark, he had hope of seeing her. Sometimes she came
home late from basketball practice. Once he walked with her some of the way. Afterwards he realised that he’d talked non-stop
about himself, what he liked and didn’t like. But all the time his every sense was alert to her. She had long straight blonde
hair that blew in strings and she tucked it behind her ears. He liked the way she was so self-contained. Sometimes she rode
her bike home, her long legs gleaming in the half-lit streets. She didn’t look like a Lester, but like a visitor from Scandinavia.
It seemed amazing that Warton had produced her.

The Lesters called her Brookie at home, like a toy or a baby girl. When he went there to visit Ben, she was sometimes friendly
and sometimes acted as if he wasn’t there. Then he knew that when she looked at him she saw one of her kid brother’s friends
and he couldn’t talk at all.

Still, there was hope. Next year Brooke was going to Perth to become a physiotherapist. Magnus was convinced they’d meet up
somewhere, Perth, London, Berlin, New York. He was beginning to think international.

He could hear his own footsteps on the gravel. This solitude, this freedom felt so natural to him that he wondered if, when
he was a man, he would always live this way. If he wasn’t so hungry he would have liked to keep walking, out of the town into
darkness. Sometimes in the holidays he took off with Winnie into the flatness, walking towards the point where the telegraph
poles joined. He felt a pull to the horizon. Old tracks and creeks led him into the bush. He carried water and a plastic box
for Winnie to drink from and some muesli bars and apples. No money. He wanted to know what it felt like to be
homeless, a wanderer.
Living on the long paddock
: he loved the sound of that. To sleep under a tree. To have faith that everything you needed would come your way.

He never went so far out of range that he couldn’t catch the putter of a tractor somewhere or a truck passing by. If he wasn’t
home by dark his parents would freak out. He always ended up hitching a ride to town in a ute or truck with Winnie barking
out the back the whole way.

Magnus came out of the Lucky carrying a double hamburger and there was Jason Kay on the footpath, bending down to Winnie who
was stamping her feet and slobbering on his hands. She hadn’t forgotten him. Jason stood up, rubbing his hands on his jeans,
shuffling, his soft, smiling face looking down. At once Magnus remembered everything about him, his shyness and quietness,
his naturally white teeth, long fingers and the way his yellow-brown hair flopped over his face. The feeling of liking he
gave.

‘So how’s it going?’ Jason murmured. Magnus remembered this too, how Jason hated talking face to face, yet he knew by the
little dark gleaming pool in the centre of his eyes that Jason was pleased to see him.

‘OK. Winnie hassles me. She’s really missing Maya.’ Why did he have to mention Maya straight off like that? Jason’s ears went
red. Magnus said quickly: ‘What are you doing these days?’ He hadn’t seen Jason all year.

‘I’m full-time at the workshop.’ That meant long hours in the Brethren furniture factory behind the shop they called Warton
Homeware. People came from miles around for their stuff. After Jason dropped out of school, he’d disappeared back into the
Brethren world, their chocolate-brick houses out on the flats and their church with a wire fence. How did a guy like
Jason, who was clever and artistic, feel about making tables and bedheads all day?

‘You look pretty clean for a factory worker.’

Jason had his own style. He was wearing an ink-blue shirt buttoned up and a black waistcoat. He didn’t dress like anyone else
in Warton, especially not the Brethren guys. His face was smooth and pale, he was eighteen but he didn’t have to shave. When
you saw him up close you remembered how good-looking he was in an androgynous sort of way.

Jason laughed. ‘I work in the office.’ He gave a quick look over his shoulder. Brethren weren’t meant to be too friendly with
the worldlies. Especially not Maya’s brother. Because Jason was very quick with numbers the Brothers had decided to let him
stay on at school to study accountancy in Year 12, the only Brethren kid to go on to senior high school. He wasn’t allowed
to watch videos, play sport or eat from the canteen. Someone told the Brothers that he sat next to Maya on the school bus,
and he left without sitting for his exams. Fortunately that was all the Brothers
were
told about.

Cannon Street was empty. Only the Lucky and the pubs were open. ‘You mightn’t see them,’ Jason said once, ‘but they’re always
there.’

‘Like slugs,’ Maya said, ‘or snakes.’

Now Jason looked up under his straight fine brows and said softly: ‘Heard from Maya?’

‘Yeah. Have you?’

Jason shook his head. ‘How is she?’ He was smiling. He was always smiling. Most of the time, Magnus thought, Jason was covering
up.

Magnus shrugged. Should he tell him about Maya’s call? Maya and Jason used to be very close. At dinner time Maya would tell
them all this stuff about the Brethren that Jason had
told her. Two or three times Jason had walked around the back roads to their house and Jacob and Toni had been very friendly
to him.

Jason loved everything at their place, the music, the books, Winnie. How the parents were nice to their kids. He said they
all laughed a lot, which they hadn’t been aware of. They showed off a bit to him like a family in a sitcom, an advertisement
for the good time worldlies had at home. All the same, Jason couldn’t bring himself to eat or drink with them. That was forbidden
by the religion. He liked best sitting on the couch, listening to classical music through the headphones. Music saved him,
he said. Magnus offered to make him a tape but Jason shook his head. ‘Not allowed.’

Now Winnie was whining, pawing at Jason’s leg. Jason bent down to scratch her ears. You were always aware of Jason’s hands.
More than anything else he would have liked to play the piano. Winnie was carrying on like this because she associated Jason
with Maya. Did Jason know this? He was a sensitive guy. Soon he stood up and shuffled, murmuring goodbye. Brethren weren’t
supposed to touch worldlies’ pets.

He ate the burger sitting on the bench next to the war memorial. It was quite dark now, there was nobody around. On the edge
of town the red lights of the new mobile phone tower glared like the eyes of a giant animal. The first thing that Maya and
Jason had found out about each other on the bus was that they’d both seen a flying saucer over Warton when they were ten years
old. Nobody else had ever believed either of them.

Last year, a couple of weeks before the exams, Jason came to stay the night. Toni and Jacob had gone to a teacher’s wedding
in Perth and, by coincidence, Jason’s mother and stepfather had gone to a three-day meeting in another town. His grandmother
was staying with them, but she was old and Jason was able to sneak out. First of all Maya styled Jason’s hair in the bathroom,
then she heated pizzas and opened a bottle of Carlos’s home-brew. She had made Jason promise to eat and drink with them. Jason
downed a glass and started talking very fast. He told them what would happen if he was found out here. He would be
withdrawn from
. None of the Brethren would ever look at or speak to him again. His stepfather would thrash him and throw him out. Even his
mother would cross the road if she saw him.

Then he’d be free, Maya said, he could come and live with them. Her cheeks were red, she was fierce, on fire. Jason said she
didn’t know what being withdrawn from was like. No one ever got over it. It was like having the bone pointed at you. You went
weak as a rag, you were afraid all the time. It didn’t matter that you knew it was irrational, you felt damned forever. You
didn’t know who you were anymore. You’d been brainwashed from birth. Most people begged to go back.

They had a joint. Only music told the truth, Jason said, and he put the headphones on and drank more beer. ‘It’s too late
for me now,’ he said. Then he was sick. Maya took him into her room.

In the morning when Magnus woke up, his parents were sitting at the kitchen table. They said that at the last minute they’d
decided not to stay the night in Perth and drove home through the night.

‘Where’s Maya?’ he asked and they said she was asleep. They were calm and ordinary. Last night’s dishes had been washed, everything
was tidy. There was no sign of Jason.

Later he went to Maya’s room and asked her what had happened, but she wouldn’t answer. She was lying face down on her bed.
For some weeks she didn’t speak to any of them. From then on she was in a bad mood most of the time, until she went away.

He fed the last mouthful of the hamburger to Winnie, waiting at his feet, watching every bite. Should he or shouldn’t he tell
the folks that Maya had called? He dropped the wrapping in the bin and Winnie stood up in one movement, ready to go.

They didn’t know Maya like he did, he thought, as he and Winnie set off home. In the pine-tree games she used to swing from
roofs and branches with a knife between her teeth. She could never say no to a dare. Her name was Bandit Queen. Jordan was
scared of her.

T
he Garcias. If they were home now, on Friday night, Jacob would be at the Garcias, watching the first elimination final with
Carlos on their plasma screen. Because of the antenna that Carlos had rigged up, the Garcias had the best reception in Warton.
Sometimes Toni and Chris joined them if the Dockers or Eagles were playing, and the couples ate hotdogs on the couch together.

From their first days in Warton the two families had been friends. The Garcias had come to live there half a year before they
did. Like the de Jongs, not having been born in the town, they were outsiders. Also they voted Labor and didn’t belong to
a church. When they were small, their kids wandered in and out of either house. The kids had grown apart now, painlessly,
but they still gave each other carefully chosen gifts on their birthdays.

Very likely if the families lived next door in the city they wouldn’t have had much to do with one another. But the two couples
had a pleasant time together. They didn’t flirt or take offence, or discuss their private lives as couples. They tended to
get together to watch big occasions on television, elections, football finals, Diana’s funeral, the World Cup, the millennium
celebrations. No doubt, if they were home, they’d watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics with the Garcias.