Luka, page 9
People came and went for the rest of the morning – mainly women, but sometimes men too. The women would come with flowers and food, tears and big wide-open arms; the men would walk in behind the women, with nothing to offer except a strong handshake and a firm clasp on Dad’s shoulder. Only one of the men cried, Brendan, a man from Dad’s work. Brendan’s own wife had died a couple of years back from cancer. He went straight up to Dad and hugged him. You could tell Dad had been caught off guard by the way his arms hesitated before they awkwardly reached around and patted Brendan on the back. Dad then dropped his arms to his side before Brendan was ready, leaving Brendan to fumble his way out of the hug.
After, Brendan went and sat on the couch next to Dad. He didn’t slink off to one of the single armchairs, didn’t line himself up with Uncle Scott so he didn’t have to talk to Dad, like most of the men had. Brendan turned his body towards Dad, his eyes fully on Dad’s face, and then he talked. He talked about how hard it had been when he’d lost his wife, Susan. How he hadn’t been able to begin to imagine a life for him and his two daughters without her, hadn’t been able to piece together even the slightest idea of a plan as to how their lives might begin to move forward.
He said he’d felt stuck in some sort of surreal limbo, particularly at the beginning, but afterwards also. He said it had been as if he was swimming in a big vast nothingness, where he couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. A place where nothing mattered. And then he reached out and grabbed Dad’s hand. ‘And you, mate,’ he said, ‘you’ve lost your daughter too.’
They sat there, Dad and Brendan, their hands together for what seemed like minutes. I thought Dad would pull his hand away, put it carefully back on his leg, tell Brendan that he really didn’t need to hear any of this. That he had things to do, and it was time for Brendan to leave, but he didn’t. He didn’t even take his hand away. Brendan was the one to break the hold.
‘Do you know what you’re doing for the funeral?’ Brendan asked, so matter-of-fact and up-front that you would have thought he was asking how much a packet of nails cost.
Dad, who hadn’t looked at Brendan the whole time, shook his head.
‘You remember Suze’s funeral? It was beautiful. Just how she would have wanted it: laid-back and casual. So many of her friends made speeches – her sister even sang a song, don’t know how she did it. And the flowers, Suze always loved flowers, you couldn’t see the coffin for the flowers.’ Brendan was quiet then, staring down at the same spot on the carpet that Dad was staring at. After a while, he reached across and put his hand on Dad’s shoulder. ‘If you want any help, you know, getting things organised, making phone calls – if you need someone to come and see the funeral director with you, call me. Sometimes it’s good to have someone around who’s been through it all before.’
Dad nodded slowly but he didn’t take his eyes off the spot on the carpet.
Not long after that, Brendan got up and left. Dad stayed on the couch and let Uncle Scott walk Brendan to the door. When Uncle Scott came back into the lounge room, Dad stood up and said, ‘We’re not having a funeral.’
‘What? Why not?’ Uncle Scott had his hands on his hips.
‘Because we’re not.’
‘You’ve got to. It’s how things are done. There are so many people who’ll want to say goodbye.
‘Don’t care, it’s not about them.’
‘What about Katie? What do you think she would have wanted?’
I got up and went to the kitchen, looking for something to eat, but kept listening to see what Dad would say.
‘Not about Katie or Jazzie either. It’s about me … me and the boys.’
‘Right, you and the boys.’
Dad walked out of the room, back to his bedroom. I opened the fridge, pulled out the leftover shepherd’s pie. Mum would’ve wanted a party, a big party with lots of music and dancing, lots of good food and endless stories about all the fun times we’d had as a family. She would have wanted a celebration. She was big on celebrations: birthdays, Christmas, even Easter. Any excuse to get everyone together.
I stuck a bit of shepherd’s pie on a plate and put it in the microwave, being sure not to heat it for too long this time. The idea of a funeral and everyone we knew coming, everyone who’d loved Mum and Jazzie, scared the hell out of me. I couldn’t think of anything worse than having to sit on some church pew while a minister that didn’t even know us, hadn’t known Mum or Jazzie, went on about how wonderful they’d been and what a tragic loss it was. I got where Dad was coming from.
Dad stayed in his room for the rest of the day.
Uncle Scott called out to me once, to come and say hello to some new visitor or other. I pretended I didn’t hear him and snuck out the back door, made my way down the side passage that was overgrown with wisteria and grabbed my skateboard from the front of the house.
When I got to the skate park, the half-pipe was empty again. All these years, I’d been heading off to school when I should have been coming to the pipe instead. It was the best time to do all those things you didn’t want anyone else to see, like dropping-it for the first time.
I climbed up to the top and stood there looking out at the ocean, the toes of my shoes hanging over the edge of the pipe, waiting. Nothing, again: no tingles, no fear, no excitement. I clamped the tail of the board down, ran my fingers through my hair and thought about the absent helmet for a fraction of a second and then leant forward.
The drop into the pipe was clean and smooth, as if I’d been doing it for years. My knees bent and my body moved with the board shaking and shuddering as if I was part of the wooden deck. The turn at the top on the other side was easy; the board rolled up and down the walls of the pipe as if I was on a swing. Every turn I cranked it at the top, making sure the board would make the height on the other side, pumping with my legs until my thighs ached, until it felt like my wheels were making grooves in the smooth concrete.
When I couldn’t go any longer, I let my skateboard slow to a stop. I stepped off and laid down on the cold concrete. My shirt was stuck to me with sweat, and my legs twitched as though they thought they were still rolling back and forth. The coldness of the concrete soothed me. White strands of clouds stretched like fairy floss across the blue sky.
The clouds were where Jazzie thought God lived, where he could watch over the world. It was some idea she’d picked up at kindy, when they’d made the kids say grace before lunch every day.
Mum thought it was funny. ‘What about all the dead
people, all the people who are supposed to be in heaven. Are they living on clouds too?’ Mum had asked.
‘Maybe.’ Jazzie had pressed her fingers up against her lips and looked up at the sky. ‘Maybe all the clouds have got their own steering wheels, so you don’t bump into anyone. Maybe you can make them go fast and slow, and when you get close enough to someone else’s cloud, you can go and have a visit.’
‘You don’t think you might fall through the cloud?’
‘No,’ she’d said, dragging the ‘o’ out. ‘When you die, you can float like God.’
‘And does he let you drive these clouds really fast?’
Jazzie had nodded in all seriousness.
Lying on my back in the half-pipe, watching wisps of clouds pull across the sky, I wondered if Jazzie had found her cloud car, if she’d managed to have a race against God, if she’d beaten him.
‘Did you drop-it again?’ Tom’s voice made me jump.
I sat up and squinted at him, yellow dots dancing in front of my eyes. ‘Yeah.’ I stood up. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Nothing. Thought you might be here. Might like some company.’ Tom leant on his skateboard, pushing the end of it into the grass. ‘Mum said I should leave you alone, but I wasn’t sure.’
I picked up my skateboard. ‘You tell your mum about my mum?’
‘Yeah, last night. She was gutted, even though she didn’t know your mum too well.’
I spun the top wheel, letting the roughness of it skim against the palm of my hand.
‘She was on the phone half the night, crying and talking to anyone she could think of.’
I kept the wheel moving. The whir of it, the vibration in the board, was hypnotising.
Tom gave me a sideways look. ‘Mum reckons your mum should never have gone into the kindy.’
My palm started to burn under the spin of the wheel.
‘But it wasn’t as if it was your mum’s fault. She didn’t get herself blown up on purpose. She was just trying to help Jazzie, right?’
Sometimes Tom said too much. It was one of the things about him that could drive me nuts, make me not want to see him for a few days.
‘You all right?’ Tom asked. ‘You look sort of grey.’
‘Fine,’ I lied, and then I turned and ran up the wall of the pipe.
Tom stood there for a moment before scrambling up after me.
We sat on the edge, our feet dangling.
After a while, he said, ‘She can be a dickhead.’
‘Your mum?’
‘Yeah … Sorry. I shouldn’t have told you what she said.’
That word again, trying to fill all the gaping holes.
The breeze was blowing straight in from the ocean. It
tasted of salt and carried the sound of the waves. I hadn’t surfed since the bombing. All my waves were in the ‘before’ world.
‘Have you dropped it yet?’ I asked.
Tom kicked his heels back and forth against the wall of the
pipe. ‘Nah.’
‘Doesn’t get much better than this: not much wind and no one around to call you a loser when you crash and burn.’
‘Guess.’
‘Go on then.’
Tom didn’t move. I wasn’t sure if he was scared or if he was still thinking about what an idiot his mum could be.
‘It’s easy.’ It was a dick of a thing to say. For almost a year now, it hadn’t been easy. ‘Want some tips?’ Another dick of a thing to say, but maybe if I said enough of them, he would give up and go away.
‘Nah, thanks. I’ll be right, Legend Luka. You’re only one day ahead of me.’
‘Make that two. I’ve done it twice now.’
‘That won’t be the story in a few minutes.’ He grabbed his board and strapped his helmet on. Held the board in position with his back foot and looked down.
‘Go on then,’ I prompted. I didn’t think he’d do it.
‘Yeah, yeah, keep your undies on.’ It was another few seconds before Tom bent his knees and shifted his weight to his front foot. Then he leant forward and was off. The board wobbled at first, looking like it might go into the death wobbles and end in a bad stack, but then he got it back and went all the way up the other side, snapped it off the top, woo-hooing as he went.
I smiled for the first time in days and then laughed when Tom jumped off at the bottom of the pipe and did a little dance, arms and fists wobbling in the air. ‘You’re a loser,’ I shouted, ‘such a bloody loser. I really don’t know why I hang out with you.’
I hadn’t seen Ray walk across the soccer field to the skate ramp. I didn’t see him until he was right on top of us.
‘What the hell are you two idiots laughing about?’ He had his skateboard in one hand.
‘Nothing,’ I said, feeling the smile that had stretched my lips run and hide, embarrassed and guilty at having been caught. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Skating. What does it look like?’
Ray was in a mood that was better left alone.
Tom knew Ray well enough to know when it was best to stay away. He picked up his board and unclipped his helmet. ‘I’m off. Told Mum I wouldn’t be long.’
‘Pussy. Can’t cope when the real skaters arrive.’
Tom turned and looked Ray straight in the eye and said with a confidence that belonged to someone twice his age, ‘Mate …’ I’d never heard him call Ray mate before. ‘I was so sad to hear about your mum and Jazzie. Devastating.’
It was like someone had slammed a gloved hand into Ray’s face and knocked the wind out of his lungs. I waited to see if a smart-arse comment would come racing back, or an angry ‘fuck you’, but all Ray did was drop his gaze so that he was looking at his skate shoes. He gave Tom a little nod.
‘See you round, Luka.’ Tom waved.
‘Gnarly drop.’
‘The best,’ Tom said, as he headed off across the soccer fields.
Ray, with his skateboard in his hand, ran up to the top of the pipe without any of the scrambling that Tom and I had done. He stood on his board, clamping it between his shoe and the pipe, and then he dropped in as if he was stepping off a step. He was one of the best skaters I knew. And he knew he was. Whenever he turned up at a half-pipe or skate park, room was always made for him no matter how crowded it was. When I was younger, I used to be able to watch him for hours, particularly when he was going up and down a pipe. The rhythm of it, the snap and turn off the top, was hypnotising.
The anger that I’d thought Ray was going to skate with wasn’t there. Tom’s words seemed to have defused what had been building in him.
He jumped off his board at the top of the ramp, landing next to me. ‘You dropped it yet?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah? When?’
‘Yesterday, and then this morning.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You going to show me then?’
‘Nah, not yet, maybe when I get a bit better.’ With Ray watching, I’d get the death wobbles and end up on my arse.
‘Suit yourself, you and I’ve got things to do anyway.’
‘What things?’
‘Investigation-type things.’
‘What investigation-type things?’
‘Well, the police aren’t exactly doing their job, are they? There’s nothing in the papers about Mathew Jacobsen. They don’t seem to be in any hurry to tie this up. So, we’re going to give them a bit of a help-along. Go and visit Jacobsen’s little sister, see if she knows anything.’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘Well, luckily, you don’t have to think.’
‘I don’t think Mum would want us going around harassing people.’
‘Who said anything about harassing? Just a few simple questions, and besides, how the bloody hell do you know what Mum would want? Don’t you think she would have wanted to know who killed her daughter and cut her own life short?’
‘Yeah, but …’
I could have walked away, could have headed off across the soccer fields and left Ray to do his investigating by himself. But if there was one thing I knew about what Mum would have wanted, it was that she would have wanted me to keep an eye on Ray. So, I picked up my skateboard and followed him across the soccer fields to the white Commodore that he'd taken three years to save for.
Eight
Ray drove straight to our school and parked out the front. He turned the engine off and sat there.
‘What exactly are we doing?’ I asked.
‘Waiting.’
‘For what?’
‘Morning tea, when everyone comes out, we’ll go and talk to her. All nice and everything, just a few questions.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘You know where she sits, don’t you?’
‘Nah.’
‘Ah … don’t be a jerk, you do.’
I did know where Leah sat – most of the time it was in the library by herself, hiding in one of the back corners on a beanbag behind a book. But I wasn’t about to tell Ray that. With a bit of luck, Leah wouldn’t even be at school. If it really was her brother who’d blown up the kindy and she knew it, or even guessed it, she’d be at home wondering how the hell she would ever set foot outside her front door again. And if it wasn’t, which I was almost sure it wasn’t, then there was a good chance she was off trying to find her brother anyway.
The bell rang out across the playground, sharp and loud. Kids dressed in green- and blue-checked shirts dawdled out of classrooms, chatting, kicking at stones, dragging backpacks along the asphalt. It was weird to see so many kids being normal, going through the routine of their day like they always had.
‘There she is!’ Ray said.
‘What? Where?’
Before I’d even spotted Leah, Ray was out of the car. He left his door wide open, ran around the front of the car and hopped over the fence.
‘Ray! Wait up!’
But he didn’t stop.
I walked after him, my head down, not wanting to attract attention. The fact that I didn’t have my uniform on was bad enough, worse was the possibility that some of my friends might see me, come up and want to say something, but not know what to say. Like Tom. Or even worse … I’d start crying. Bloody Ray.
When I caught up to Ray, he was agitated. He had Leah cornered between the maths block and the English block. She was looking past him, as if she was trying to pretend he wasn’t there. Or maybe hoping someone would come and rescue her. Her scraggly, lank hair hung over her face; her backpack slung over one shoulder.
‘Look,’ Ray was saying, ‘it’s not as if you’re in trouble or anything. We know it had nothing to do with you – you can’t help the family you’re born into – but we’re just trying to work out what happened, that’s all. You’d do the same if it was your mum and sister who’d been blown up. You’d want to know what had happened, wouldn’t you?’
Leah didn’t even shrug her shoulders. It was hard to tell whether she’d heard Ray or not.
‘So, do you know? Do you know where your brother is?’
She still didn’t answer.
‘You got trouble hearing or something?’ Ray was a good head taller than Leah. He was standing close enough to be intimidating, to lean in over the top of her. His hands were shoved deep in the pockets of his low-slung jeans, as if he wanted to be careful of them, wanted to make sure they were stored away where it would be hard for him to access them.
