‘Oh, Jack-Jack, I’m sorry,’ says Granny. ‘Queenscliff’s just so far away.’
‘But I really need you to come,’ I say, a bit louder now. ‘Dad keeps going overseas and I really miss him, too.’
I notice there’s wetness sliding down my cheeks.
‘Please, Granny? Or can’t you find your way back from the Otherworld?’
And then for the millionth time, my memory download shows me what I saw on Dad’s laptop the day after the accident, a great big black crater smoking at the bottom of Cahill’s Leap. Then somehow I see the whole thing in slow-mo inside my brain: Grandpa swerving to avoid the truck, the car skidding and flipping across two lanes of highway, smashing through the metal barricade and falling down-down-down into a terrible explosion at the bottom of the ravine.
Mum never told me exactly what happened because I was only nine, but it was on the news and the Council’s been having meetings ever since about making the road wider to stop it from ever happening again.
‘Were you scared?’ I ask Granny. My voice goes all wobbly and there’s a little sob I can’t keep down.
Granny doesn’t answer.
‘What’s it like in the Otherworld?’
All I can hear is the swishing and spraying of the dry-cleaning machines and Granny mumbling something I can’t understand.
‘When can I come back to Kaminski’s?’ I ask, but I already know the answer to that: I’m never going back to Kaminski’s Dry Cleaners, and neither are they.
‘Are you feeling all right, Jackson?’ Nanna Pam asks suddenly. I look up from my shoe-phone to see her staring at me in the rear-vision mirror. Maybe she heard me talking to Granny?
‘Car sick,’ I say, because it’s easier.
‘Well, we’re home now.’
She parks her car behind the Red Rocket in the driveway. It’s dark outside, but there’s light behind the curtains in the lounge.
Nanna Pam doesn’t turn off the engine. ‘Your mum and the girls are home. The lamb roast’s waiting inside. If you’re not too car sick, that is.’
‘Thanks Nanna,’ I say. ‘I love your roasts.’ It comes out a bit slowly, but she smiles and blows me a kiss.
As I climb out of the car, she lowers her window.
‘You’re not a migrant, Jackson,’ she says. ‘You were born right here in Australia, just like me. What would make you think that?’
I want to explain how I feel like a stranger everywhere, but Nanna Pam doesn’t wait. She just waves and drives away down Seaview Street.
The taillights of her car look like red robot eyes staring at me, until blackness gobbles them up.
5
There’s my wake-up call.
The sound of baroque music warbling down the stairs signals it must be seventeen minutes past five on the day after Mother’s Day. I reach for my phone on the bedside table: yes, exactly so. It’s been an unrelenting routine for almost five years now, yet somehow I still feel shocked by it every single morning. Not always the same music, rarely the same mood, but always 5.17 for my clockwork boy.
I spring out of bed, charge down the hallway and take the spiral staircase two steps at a time. Milla and Ruby are still sleeping and it’s just not fair on them. Once outside Jackson’s door, however, I hesitate. What will his mood be this morning: sombre, hyper or aggro? Whichever it is, I tell myself, I must stay calm.
Nudging open the door, I find Jackson suspended upside down from his bunk-bed, doodling on his stomach with a black permanent marker. How long has he been hanging there with the blood rushing to his brain? How long can a child hang upside down on a daily basis, without causing some kind of permanent damage?
‘Jackson, please get down.’
I move around the room, stepping over the contents of the drawers he empties out every night. When he was younger, I used to insist that he clear away the chaos before breakfast each morning. Overseeing the task like some sort of maternal police officer until every pencil, Lego piece and Pokémon card had been restored to its rightful position. These days, I’ve lost the will for order. ‘Pick your battles,’ the family therapist advises.
‘Where’s the speaker hiding today, hon?’ I’m scanning for the source of the music.
Jackson doesn’t reply. He secretes it somewhere new every morning, but today it’s louder than usual. He’s been cranking up the volume since Andy left for New York.
As I move closer to Jackson’s bunk, the music grows louder. I check under his bed, between the sheets and, finally, locate the speaker beneath a cushion.
I switch it off with a flourish.
‘That’s better,’ I say, smiling at him. ‘Good morning.’
Jackson uncurls his legs from the bunk, somersaults backwards and lands heavily on his knees. The impact doesn’t seem to register.
‘Are you okay, Jackson?’
He staggers to his feet and takes several steps towards me. ‘Muuum.’
I recoil at his tone, backing towards the door. I’ve heard it before, on difficult days. ‘Let’s not start the day like this, Jackson.’
It hasn’t happened in recent months, but he’s hurt me inadvertently in the past. Dr Kelleher points out that Jackson’s outbursts aren’t personal, they’re merely symptomatic of deep frustration. And they can be minimised, apparently, by Andy and me ‘modelling parental containment’.
‘Muuum.’ Jackson launches himself at me.
Instinctively, I raise my hands to cover my face.
A moment later, his arms encircle my waist and I feel his cheek pressed against my chest.
‘Oh, darling boy.’ I lower my hands, ashamed of my instinct to protect myself from my eleven-year-old son. ‘Is everything… okay, Jackson?’
He jerks his head up to look at me. ‘I’m just really really hungry, Mum.’
‘Well, we can fix that,’ I say. ‘What about a bowl of porridge the way you like it? You need lots of energy for school today.’
‘Yum.’ Jackson smiles.
I wish Andy was here to witness this tiny triumph of what Dr Kelleher calls ‘de-escalation’.
As we move down the stairs and along the hallway, I notice the kitchen light is on already. We enter the kitchen to find Milla at the island bench, looking effortlessly stunning in a white silk kimono, bent over her notebook. The neat lines across the page suggest she’s writing another poem.
Snickers is curled up in her lap. He leaps hopefully to the floor as soon as I enter the kitchen. For a dachshund of such meagre proportions, Snickers has the appetite of a Saint Bernard. He trots towards me, his belly almost brushing the tiles, then begins gnawing at the sisal mat.
‘Naughty, Snickers.’ I reach down to fondle his ears, then gently extract the rug from his teeth.
Snickers gazes up at me with a look that says, ‘Feed me or I’ll die’.
I tip some dry doggie biscuits into his bowl.
‘How are you, Milla?’ I ask.
‘Tired,’ she replies. Her weary smile suggests her patience is dwindling with Jackson’s early-morning music-blasting.
Jackson raises a hand of greeting, then pulls up a chair so close to his sister that their shoulders touch. Milla endures this encroachment of personal space with characteristic good humour, until Jackson leans over and tries to read her poem.