The first hand statue they made in Beyen was moulded from plastic, and in the heat wave of 1986 the fingers melted and it looked like a really old person with arthritis. People started touching the sticky surface and covering it in heaps of fingerprints. So then they had to cart it away because they said someone could actually get hurt for real and that would be a liability and the town could not afford to get sued again after that truck accident where Mrs Harrison got run over by a breakaway pack of squealing pigs. If she’d been quick enough she would have nabbed one for her husband Gerald. He’s Gary’s twin brother, the other butcher in town. So we got a new hand made out of metal. It still gets really hot in summer but no one gets stuck to it. Het is echt een mooie hand. If you lived in Antwerp that’s how you’d say ‘It’s a real beauty’.
‘Me and Mum used to sit in that hand,’ I tell Pat. ‘We used to pretend it was taking us for a ride.’ Sometimes it still feels like I’m holding on. Pat clears his throat and taps the steering wheel. Then he says real quiet, ‘That was a long time ago.’
I stretch my hand out on the window glass. If I close one eye it fits right inside the statue. The engine kicks over again and vibrations run up my fingers. Pat was right. The hand wasn’t telling me to stop. It was pushing me away. I look in the rear-view mirror as it gets smaller and smaller. My backpack sits on my lap. I unzip it slowly. I let my fingers run over the few precious things I was allowed to take with me. My proper good fork, the only one in the southern hemisphere that does not leave too much metal in your mouth. Mum’s fancy necklace, a perfect circle of rainbow moonstones that used to be her mum’s. I had to take it because it’s an air loom, which is something precious that passes down from one generation to the next. Mum used to wear it even if it wasn’t a special occasion. When she wanted to make a boring job fancy she’d whip it on and peel those potatoes like a princess. I don’t like having things around my neck so I’ve brought it but I won’t wear it. There are other things that would be easier to leave behind, but I have to keep, like a fish and a snow globe.
Mum and Dad were never meant to be. Light and shadow, soft and sharp, lost and found. Me in the middle like a chook with its head cut off, going round and round in circles. I don’t really feel whole or a pretty sum of my parts. Not the right sum at least. Imagine this: a shiny fishing lure lying in the middle of a dirt puddle all the way out here in whoop de whoop. The hooks had come off, rusted and bent out of shape. Can’t get further from the sea than here. This tiny metal fish of mine is the story of Dad. I was running away from him when I found it. Put my headphones on and tried to cancel out his shouting, but I could still see tiny specks of spit and angry vowels flying out of his mouth. Beautiful silver scales so small and perfect, each half-moon laid over the next. I picked that fish up and ran my fingers across every one. Every stroke, every scale shimmering in the sun. Reminded me to breathe all the way to the bottom of my lungs. I kept that fish in my pocket and when things got too loud, nothin’ left but to run, I’d hold it between my fingers. Count the scales until all was said and done.
The snow globe is the story of Mum. Inside that perfectly round glass dome is Paris. Actually it’s just the Eiffel Tower but if you shake it up snowflakes float all around, then fall slowly to the bottom. Mum gave it to me. She found it in the cat-rescue op shop in Wyndful Gully that one summer we went on a holiday. Well camping, ’cause we couldn’t afford to go anywhere but the next town across. We walked there. All the kids at the camp site had a go shaking the globe as hard as they could, timing how long the snow took to settle. Twenty-seven seconds was the longest. It’s the only time I had something everyone else wanted. Until someone’s dad took kids for a ride in the back of his ute, doing donuts and crazy stuff. Mum wouldn’t let me go and I was glad because one boy called Conor fell out and broke his arm. The night before Mum went for good we set a new record. Sat nose to nose on each side of that globe until the last snowflake dropped. Thirty-three seconds. When we looked up I saw myself in her eyes, reflected a thousand times over like a picture in a picture. That’s called an optical illusion because there’s only one of me, and now there’s none of her.
I’ve also brought a photo of me and Mum sitting in the Beyen hand. A reporter from the Dry Gully Gazette took it when the statue was unveiled. We’re high-fiving each other and smiling so hard our cheeks look shiny. The photo didn’t make it into the gazette, but the reporter sent us a copy anyway.
Pat doesn’t go around potholes, he goes straight through them at full speed, and my bum clears the seat for a moment. I take the snow globe out of my bag. The rising sun reflects off the plastic dome and sends a piercing light into my eyes. I can still see Mum’s fingerprints on the side.
A bit of my heart catches on Mrs Devlin’s splintered fence at the end of Baker Street, trying to hold on even though nothing can ever be the same again. Because I killed my mum.
4 Clouds moving too fast
We’ve only been on the road for six kilometres so maybe I shouldn’t have told you that yet. Now you’re probably rippin’ all the pages out of this story and throwing them into the fire. Watching the words curl into themselves and float away. Please don’t go, not yet. Pat’s just about the worst travelling companion there is, so I need some extra company. When I close my eyes I’m under the waves, trying to come up to the surface but then I suddenly hit my head on the bottom of the ocean. No way up and out of something like this. If there was a God I’d be asking how he could’ve let me do what I did. Then again, you don’t have to be a bad person to do bad things. Half the people in jail say they didn’t mean to do it, that it was just a misunderstanding.
Right now Classic Cougar 97.3 FM is playing eight from the eighties and, without even realising it, Pat’s tapping along to A-ha. He’s popped a piece of gum and I think his ticker’s calmed down. Me and Pat have never talked about what happened. Men drink and punch their way through feelings. That’s what Dr. Juno Nova Martinez said on Oprah.
Even though we had to leave everything behind memories will still hitch a ride. Maybe if there’d been breaking news on the radio forecasting ‘a terrible day for terrible things to happen’ then obviously we would have stayed put. But it was beautiful weather with no clouds at all. Not a single one.
Every Sunday we went to Margie’s place so Mum could give her a mani/pedi because Margie’s back might break if she tried to touch her toes. Her spinal cord was hollowed out and dry. Mum would put all the nail clippings in a sandwich bag because Margie said they reassured her. ‘Can’t keel over if the hair is flowing and the nails are growing.’
We saw a lot of seniors, me and Mum. Everyone can look radiant if they know what their colour system is and attend to their roots on a regular basis. The oldies at the Best Intentions Nursing Home all liked Tina Arena. ‘She’s come so far,’ they’d say and pass the Woman’s Day mag back and forth. Tina’s big in France. She made Mum wistful.
Before we left for Margie’s that day I’d dug up some potatoes for her Irish stew. I loved shaking in the Worcestershire sauce, watching all the little circles of oil float on the top and sucking out the marrow. Parfait. Digging up spuds was a game for me and Mum. We’d race ’em down the driveway; Mum gave them names and everything.