The House That Was Eureka (17 page)

My boyfriend. There it was again. Evie said nothing. Was Evie-Peevie.

‘Don’t act dumb with me,’ Ted said. ‘You can fool your mother with your trampolining and your young-for-your-age act, but I know Lover Boy was in your room at sparrow’s fart yesterday morning, I heard his voice in there when I come down to make a cup of tea because I can’t sleep because he’s kept me up half the night with his bashing around and his ruddy mouth-organ.’

Evie didn’t try to explain. You couldn’t explain things to Ted. Plus she couldn’t say anything, because of the gun. Evie didn’t know why, but she knew the gun had to be kept secret. In her dreams, the questions tormented her. ‘Where is it? Where is he?’ And Evie would shake herself awake, she was scared she’d tell them. Though tell them what, when she was awake, she didn’t know. One of them was a policeman, big, who yelled at her, like Ted was doing now.

‘But if you think I’m worried, you can have another think. Long as your mother doesn’t know, I don’t care what you do. I’ve got better things to worry about than you.’

‘And I’ve got better things to worry about than you!’ Evie ran, slammed the door behind her. She felt sick. Him suggesting that her and Noel…

That weekend, Evie put off telling Ted and Mum that people wanted to come around to their house and make a video. And she put off going in to see Noel too. She wanted to see Noel, to ask what he’d done with the gun, to tell him what Sharnda had told her, but she couldn’t stand the thought of going in after what Ted had suggested.

That weekend, Noel lay in bed, with the gun hidden beneath it, lay there feeling sick. He
was
sick sometimes, into a white plastic icecream container that he’d brought up to his bed.

His grandmother, in her room, was restless. Writing interminable notes, that she erased. On Thursday and Friday, while Noel’s mum had been at work, Noel had heard her mumble-whinning to her mates. On Saturday and Sunday she was silent, but all the time writing.

At one stage on Saturday he took pity on her. Went into her room and offered to play noughts and crosses. She liked games, the despot. That was about the only thing she’d done when he was a kid. She’d played games with him. Ludo and snakes and ladders and sometimes battleships and noughts and crosses, but more usually euchre and five hundred and solo and even poker. She’d played hard, making no concessions to his age, never faking it to let him win, and in the card games they’d played for cents; so that he’d spent his childhood being hundreds of dollars in debt to her and doing chores to work it off.

That was the one issue he’d ever heard his mother row with her over. ‘You could let him win sometimes. Or you could forget the debt.’

But the despot wouldn’t budge: ‘No one ever let
me
win!’ For the despot loved the power of victory as a child does, rubbing it in. ‘I’ve won! I’ve won!’

I’ve won. She didn’t say it that Saturday, but Noel could see it on her face, the greedy anticipation that Noel would put his nought
there
, and she would put her cross
here
, and make a line and beat him.

But in her haste the despot had slipped. Noel drew his nought here at the bottom and not there at the top and it was Noel who made a line.

The despot didn’t even deign to look at him. Carefully lifted the bottom corner of the transparent magic sheet and erased Noel’s nought, then filled one in for him up the top, put her own cross down the bottom, and slashed a line through her crosses and won.

‘But that’s wrong, Nanna. It isn’t what happened.’

She looked then, fixed him with her eye, then wiped the whole page clean and wrote:

‘
IF I WRITE IT DIFFERENTLY, IT HAPPENED DIFFERENTLY
.’

You’re a cheating old woman, Nanna. Then Noel thought: No, not an old woman, just a kid. For that was how kids thought.

Once when Noel was about seven, Matt and Tasso and another kid called Billy had knocked him down and taken the shop note that Nanna had written. Too scared to go home yet again without anything, Noel had bought some random things, then written a note with those things on it.

When he’d got home, the despot had hit the roof. Peanut butter instead of sugar, jam doughnuts instead of cornflour, and what was this Donald Duck pencil sharpener? ‘This isn’t what’s on the note, boy!’

‘Yes it is, Nanna.’ He’d proved it to her.

The despot hadn’t been amused. Had sent Noel to his room. Where Noel had lain, sobbing at the injustice of the world, for in his seven-year-old mind the second note had quite replaced the first and he couldn’t see why he was being punished. If I write it differently, that’s how it was…

‘Okay, Nanna,’ Noel said on the Saturday, but didn’t ask her if she’d like another go. He’d learnt as a child: games to the despot weren’t to be played with, they were real.

So that weekend, Evie sat in her room, putting off everything. She wanted to see Noel, but she couldn’t go in.

That weekend, Noel and the despot were sick in their rooms, and Noel’s mum scuttled around the house, popping through their doors like a nervy lizard from a crack, trying to wait on them both. Took food to the despot, which she waved away. Took food to Noel, who couldn’t eat without being sick later into the white icecream container. She wanted to get the doctor, but they both baulked.

‘I’m not sick!’

(Just dead I’m dead got a bullet in me head.)

‘I’M NOT SICK!’

(Just alive, not dead, battling on a roof with an unwanted life while the children jump up around me like slates into the sky.)

So all Saturday and all Sunday morning, Evie didn’t see Noel.

On the Sunday afternoon, Sharnda came around to show Evie some photocopies of some documents she’d used when she’d written her thesis. Ted answered the door.

‘Hello, I’m Sharnda, is Evie home?’

Ted looked at her as if Evie had no right to have visitors. But let her in. Jodie and Maria stared and whispered, started to giggle, then hid their mouths behind their hands. Sammy joined the game. Sharnda felt shy, tried to explain herself, talked loud over the television football.

‘I work up at the CYSS centre.’

Ted really got going then. Raving on about dolebludgers, like someone on talk-back radio. What you should do with people like that is turn the radio off. But Sharnda had to go and do her social worker bit.

‘One of the problems of young unemployed workers is that their parents refuse to believe that they can’t get work, whereas in actual fact…’

‘How can
you
talk to
me!
’ Ted exploded. ‘Coming in here with your fat salary, telling me how to run my family. You
live off
the unemployed!’

You’re half-right, Sharnda thought. But probably not for long, mate. ‘The way things look, they’ll cut off the funds for the centre and I’ll be unemployed myself in a couple of weeks.’

Ted looked sharply at her, but said nothing.

All the time this was going on, Newtown battled Souths on TV. Maria took advantage of Ted’s involvement and switched channels.

‘Turn that back, miss.’

Sharnda’s eyes were roving around the walls. But in fifty years the house had been painted and repainted, wallpapered and rewallpapered, and there were no marks that could be bullet holes in the plaster…This is all a far cry from ’31, Sharnda thought, as she observed the pine-and-vinyl chairs, the roller skates, the white-tile coffee table, the bright professional photo of bright modern smiling people (though Evie wasn’t smiling, she noticed), the TV set where Newtown was just scoring a goal. Ted and Sharnda both let out a cheer.

‘Looks like they’ve a chance this year, Newtown,’ Sharnda said.

Ted looked at her dubiously. ‘Why would you care?’

‘Because I live here.’

‘Evie’s out the back,’ Ted said. ‘Go on through.’

‘I never used to back Newtown,’ he added, ‘but now I’m here I reckon I might as well.’

As Sharnda went through the kitchen she heard his voice floating out after her. ‘The people you should worry about is blokes who’ve worked all their lives and then lose their jobs. They don’t have CYSS centres and social workers. Who gives a stuff about
them!
’

Sharnda knocked at Evie’s door and heard ‘Come in!’ She stepped in uneasily, feeling shy with Evie too now, but not with Noel, who wandered in from the back way, white-faced and sick-looking, meandering in like he had a right to be there, a boy Sharnda recognized from when she’d been up outside Coles on a Saturday morning handing out pamphlets about an unemployed workers’ rally and he’d been there, playing his mouth-organ.

Sharnda handed them the first of a stack of photocopies.