Making Laws for Clouds (16 page)

We get into the bus, and I fit my bike in behind the first row of seats.

‘Anyway,' she says as she starts the engine and the doors shut. ‘Maybe we
could
talk about the paper at breakfast time, but we don't. And we don't get to watch TV either. That's a rule of Dad's. He prefers the quiet. You do that at your place in the mornings, don't you? Watch TV?'

‘Yeah. Generally. For the news and stuff. It's not bad.'

We pull out from the kerb, Tanika turning the big steering wheel like she's turning a ship around. And I'm sitting right behind her on the front passenger seat, watching the streetlights shine in on her bare thighs and her forearm muscles – more wonders of nature, working smoothly away to swing the bus out onto the road.

‘Do a lot of people watch TV in the mornings?' she says. ‘What do you reckon? Maybe I could drop into your place some day at breakfast time. Do they have it on a weekend, breakfast TV?'

‘Sure. Well, Saturdays they do.' I've been an idiot, and Tanika's the kind of person who can make that apparent in a second, without ever having to tell you directly. Without even meaning to tell you at all. Just in the name of peace, getting on, turning a conversation somewhere better. I want to lean forward right now and kiss her on the mouth, but we're driving at fifty and the road's pretty narrow. “That's “Today” on Saturday. There's a whole different program on Sunday.'

‘What's it called?'

‘“Sunday”. I think they make the names easy 'cause it's early in the morning.'

‘Well, I could come over.'

‘Sure, that'd be good. And maybe we could make it a bit different to usual. You know, special breakfast food, like pancakes with maple syrup and strawberries. And cream from a blue-and-white striped jug.'

‘Maybe even tomorrow.'

‘Well . . . maybe some other time. We don't even have the jug yet. It's a good idea, but. Let's see how Mum is first.'

She caught me there for a second. She had me thinking about her coming over for breakfast, just the way I'd like it to be. She made me forget, and had me dreaming of a better life. She didn't mean to. It's how she looks, how she is, what she does. It's just her, au naturel. She had me dreaming of a better life, a better life where pancakes happened. Maybe some day. Maybe some of that level-two wage could go on a pancake date at my place. I might have to have a couple of goes at it with just Mum and Wayne first, to get the recipe into shape before we do it. Maybe it comes in packets. That'd be good.

All the lights are off when we pull up outside. The TV's flickering away in there, but the volume's down and there are some other noises going on.

‘Is that your mother?' Tanika says. She sounds
worried. ‘Can you hear that? Does she ever have trouble breathing?'

‘No, I think that's something else.' I take my keys out and I give them a good shake. One of the louvres is open a crack and I put my mouth up to it and shout out, ‘Pants up, boy. Visitors.'

There's a lot of panicky shuffling in there, and some throat clearing, and the noise of static as the channel changes to anything other than video.

‘Wayne doesn't mind the occasional international film,' I tell Tanika. ‘And he gets rather involved. I think he tries to treat the subtitles as an opportunity for self-improvement.'

‘Yeah, right,' Tanika says, and she laughs.

That's his story, and he's sticking to it. Or sticking to something, at least.'

The truth of course is that, whenever he can, Wayne goes halves in $2.15-weekly porn videos with Les, the neighbour out the back. But the less said about Les the better. He's a bit more hard-core than Wayne, who's perfectly happy with just nudity.

Wayne says Mum's asleep. She's been in bed for an hour or so, maybe two hours. It hasn't been such a good night. He's been in there a few times with glasses of water or to sort her curtains out and stop them flapping around, things like that.

‘Not the best video night,' he says. ‘I've been
working that pause button. And her timing hasn't always been good.'

‘She likes fresh air,' I tell Tanika. So she likes the windows open wide. But the curtains in there get noisy on windy nights. And if the moon's out and shining in on them, and they're waving round and you're half-asleep . . . you know the way that kind of thing gets into your dreams?'

‘Yeah,' she says. ‘Sure.'

‘There was other stuff,' Wayne says. ‘Other stuff too. She was talking.'

And he's saying it to me, looking right at me, but he keeps twitching his eyes over Tanika's way. The TV's fizzing and crackling with static, with the static of being between channels, and the light from the screen is coming out of the lounge room in a hazy glow and lighting one side of his face. His cheek and his hardworking eyeball, trying to let me know that there's some kind of secret going on.

‘It's all right, Wayne,' I tell him. ‘We don't keep anything from Tanika.'

‘Well, okay then. Okay. It's Mum. You got her kind of worried. I think it's to do with a lot of stuff happening at once. It's kind of to do with you becoming the family success story. What with the new level at work and with . . .' He turns to Tanika. ‘Don't take this the wrong way . . . with, um, friends with jobs in real
estate and who drive buses, and that. And who ended up not in the nativity play.'

‘Wayne . . .' It's time for my calm big-brother voice. ‘You might have to get a bit more precise about the actual issue. And, also, I've got a few years on you, remember? You and Mum forget that sometimes. There's room in this family for more than one success story.'

‘Yeah, righto. That's good. Um, well, it was to do with the level that you got today at work, and you going out a bit and getting a licence that'd let you drive long-haul trucks and stuff.'

‘I'm more likely to go for the horticulture, actually. That's the plant part of the training.'

‘Yeah, but that's just how it starts, she reckons. Ideas that aren't so big can get big pretty quickly. And then you'd be out of here, which is the main worry. If you got to travelling you might see places better than here and, you know . . . girls in different towns, and gambling. And that'd be that.'

‘But that's stupid. I don't want a girl in a different town, or even a different girl in this town, and if I wanted a look at places better than here I could take a quick trip next door, either side. Did you talk her out of it all?'

‘Well . . . I didn't know what to say. You'd just had that fight with her, and then you'd gone out. I can't read your mind.'

‘Doofus. Next time what you say is, “Kane's not leaving.” Something like that. Keep it simple. “For Kane, this is home.”'

‘She was worried because of Dad.'

‘What's he got to do with this? That's the past. You know that, don't you? It's long ago. I can't remember much about Dad, and you can't remember anything, so what's he got to do with it? We've got our own thing going now. Have had for years. And it's on the brink of getting better. That's what's happening now. Right?'

‘Right.'

There's a noise from Mum, coming from down the hall. It's like one side of a conversation. She's talking in her sleep again and it starts off making no sense and then she's going, ‘What? What?' as if the conversation's turned on her.

‘Okay, my go,' I tell Wayne. ‘Leave this one to me.'

Tanika's standing there, saying nothing. Which was fine till Mum started making noise. Now I'm not so sure. She hasn't seen this side of things before, not close up, but there's no point in hiding it from her.

The light's glowing in her hair and on her face. I reach my hand out to her, and she reaches hers out and takes it.

‘Is this okay?' That's what I say to her because I want to say something but I can't think what it'd be.

‘Yeah. Of course.' She smiles, to make the
situation seem closer to normal than it is. ‘Go and talk to her.'

Mum's voice is louder now, back there in the dark. Angry or confused – the two get mixed up sometimes.

‘I'll wait here,' Tanika says. ‘Wayne can tell me about the movie he's watching.'

‘Or not,' Wayne says, looking a bit tense. ‘It's very . . . European.'

It's darker the further you get away from the lounge room, but I don't turn any lights on. Lights freak Mum out when she's stuck in a bad dream. I open her door, and she's lying across her bed at an angle, with just a sheet over her. A sheet with the moon on it, making shadows like a hillside, the huge body of my mother rising up out of the landscape.

‘Wayne,' she says when she realises there's someone there. ‘Wayne,' in a murmury, rum-heavy voice. ‘What are we going to do?'

‘It's Kane, Mum.'

‘Kane . . . Kane.' Said the first time almost like a question, but the second like reassurance.

‘Yeah.' I go and sit on the bed, round the far side – the window side – down around knee level so that she can see me in the light and I'm not casting a shadow on her face. She doesn't like that. ‘It's me, Mum. I've just been out for a few hours, but now I'm back. Simple as that, and same as always.'

‘Oh.' She's still half asleep. Her mouth moves into the O shape a while before she makes the sound to go with it, then the sound comes out slowly.

‘We got our wires crossed a bit earlier on. That's all that happened.'

She opens her eyes, and looks at me. She reaches out and squeezes my hand. ‘Good boy,' she says. ‘That's my boy. My young man.'

‘Yeah. But still here, right? We're getting somewhere, Mum. That's all that's happening. But it's us. Not just me. See? That's the idea.'

‘You came back tonight.'

‘Yeah, like every other bloody night.'

‘Yeah.' There's enough light coming in that I think I can see her smile. She nods her head without lifting it off the pillow.

‘So everything's like it usually is,' I tell her. ‘Just a little better. I'm doing well at work, Mum. I've been promoted. That gives us more money and it means that I'll get training opportunities. That's what I was trying to tell you.' There's a snuffly noise, which turns into a snore. A one-off loud snore, then more snoring, slowly, steadily. ‘So everything's fine.' She's asleep now, her mouth half-open and her eyes closed and noisy breathing passing in and out of her. ‘Even tonight, I think it still stacks up as the best summer of my life.' A gust of wind blows in, flaps the edge of the
curtain up, then drops it down again. She doesn't stir. ‘And Wayne's had a good evening. He's watched a European movie, so there's culture involved. And he's been kept busy performing unholy acts on his middle regions, of course. But that's our boy. Never bored while his hands are free and his pants are loose-fitting. And in the morning we'll talk about Dad. You and me. In the morning or some time soon, when it's early in the day and it suits us both. Okay? And we'll talk about you. If you want.'

More snoring, but the snoring of someone lost far away in sleep. I slide my hand out from under hers and I stand up and go to the door, as quietly as I can. On my way out, I shut it behind me with hardly a click.

Meanwhile, Wayne, not Caloundra's greatest conversationalist, has taken Tanika into the lounge room. He's got her sitting in Mum's chair and he's on the couch and they're watching David Letterman with the volume down low, still in the dark. He's leaning forward, staring at the screen and pointing the remote at it too, as if he's ready to try for a better option the second Tanika says she's bored. He sees me in the doorway and nearly says something, but then he doesn't.

‘Good work, Wayne. You sure know how to entertain a guest.'

‘No worries,' he says, as if he's just copped a compliment. ‘Mum okay?'

‘Yeah. Fine. Everything's fine. Just a few wires crossed, and we've sorted it out now. So Tanika and I might head out again for a while. Give you a chance to watch that video of yours all the way to the end. Does that sound okay, Tanika?'

‘Sure. Why not?'

‘And, Wayne, could you not use the tissues with the aloe vera in them? They're kind of expensive and we got them because some of Mum's skin's pretty fragile, remember?'

‘Um, yeah, sure. She must have brought them out here earlier, or something. I'm just watching TV.'

The sound of heavy on-screen breathing is back before we get to the front door, just for a second or two, and then he mutes it till we're down the stairs.

‘I've got to tell you a bit more about all of that,' I say to Tanika. ‘Everything that's been going on. It's been a funny sort of day.'

‘Yeah. I thought it might have been. Are you hungry? I know it's the middle of the night, but I wouldn't mind some pizza. How about that?'

‘I think I used my voucher already. But we could reheat the leftovers in the house . . .'

‘Fresh pizza'd be better. And it's my shout. It's a special occasion. And I hear it didn't go so well earlier. Wayne told me a few things. I think it's still a bit confusing for him, though.'

‘Do you think he'll be okay?'

‘Back there with his video? Yeah. He'll be fine. You'll probably need to explain some things to him some time, though.'

‘Yeah. I will. But there's still some things I'm only just finding out about myself.'

She drives us to Domino's and when we get out of the bus she says, ‘Meatosaurus, isn't it?'

It's bright in Domino's, fluoro bright, and there's a crew of them in there still at work, rattling trays and folding boxes and scooping up pizzas when they come out of the oven. Tanika orders and pays and they tell us it'll be ten minutes maximum.