We’ve been in the unit since Christmas – that’s when Mum and Dad finally sold our North Shore house and split the difference. Mum and I hauled our stuff to the inner west, which is closer to her sister and has cheaper real estate. Dad kept going west until he couldn’t go any further without falling off the continent.
‘Did you hear what I said, Will?’
‘What did you speak to him for? You guys are divorced, remember? That means you no longer have to sleep together, go to each other’s work dinners, or engage in conversation.’
Mum rinses her mug. ‘He’s disappointed you didn’t go over last week. He says you would have loved it. It was a celebration of Western Australia’s emerging Light and Space movement, you know.’
I know. Dad sent me an invitation to the launch of his new art magazine a month ago. Like it never occurred to him that, short of a spare five days to drive across the desert, I’d have to spend four-and-a-half hours on a plane to get there. He knows I don’t do planes anymore. ‘He should have thought more about how much I’d have loved it before having his launch party ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COUNTRY,’ I say.
‘Come on, Will,’ says Mum. ‘Perth is where the magazine is based. And where he lives. Would you have preferred it if he didn’t invite you at all?’
From my chair, I peg the tea towel I’ve been using as a napkin onto the kitchen bench top. Just one of the advantages of living in a shoebox. Honestly, if you asked me which living arrangement, old or new, wins the overall Sucks Most award, I’d be hard-pressed to decide. In our old suburb, the streets were too quiet and everyone looked like they’d just stepped out of a fifties catalogue of British knitting patterns. At least here the streets are loud with traffic, and the smells of fish sauce, oil and tamarind spill from the Vietnamese restaurants. All sorts of people live around here – immigrants from Tonga, refugees from Somalia, Portuguese who have been here for generations. A group of Lebanese oldies holds court every day outside the local pizza joint, where they eat oregano pizza and drink cup after cup of black coffee. Down the road, hipsters pour single-origin piccolos while stroking their beards. Posters and political slogans decorate building walls.
I love all of this: walking around the suburb, I feel its heartbeat. The only part I can’t stand is the noise from above. Living under a flight path is the worst. I wake in the mornings to the rumble of plane engines and fall asleep to it at night, when it enters my dreams. With my eyes closed, my ears pop and suddenly I’m in a cabin with shaking walls and flickering lights. I haven’t slept properly since we got here.
The toaster pops. Morning sun arcs across the kitchen floor.
‘We’ve talked about this,’ Mum says.
‘Then there’s no need to repeat ourselves.’
‘You could at least give him a call, Will.’
‘Those phone companies have higher profit margins than the GDPs of some small island nations, you know.’
‘He’s your father.’
‘There are legal avenues to change that.’
The bird on the grass buries its beak in its feathers.
‘Don’t be late for school.’
First period on Mondays is Miss Fowler’s English class. Nat and I always sit together and catch up on the weekend. Today, Kimberley Kitchener has plonked herself in my usual chair. Nat looks ready to kill her but Kimberley is too busy WhatsApping to notice.
The only other spots are up the back of the room. I sit down, turn my phone to silent and get cracking on my overdue creative writing homework. This week’s challenge: an obituary.
WILL EVERHART of Sydney, Australia, had a keen wit and a sharp mind. Greatly admired by her peers for her principled approach to life, she was also deeply artistic. Renowned critics considered her to be nothing less than the Future of Australian Art.
The quality of the work she produced during her heartbreakingly short life only compounds the tragedy of her passing. After a drawn-out period of suffering, Everhart died during first period on Monday, of boredom.
She is survived by her philandering parents.
There’s something too elegant about the word ‘philandering’, so I change it to ‘cheating’. But ‘cheating’ is too mild, so I change it to ‘double-crossing’.
‘Will Everhart,’ Miss Fowler calls out from the front. ‘I asked you a question. What on earth are you doing?’
My classmates turn in their chairs to stare at me. I don’t blame them. Today’s lesson on the poetry of Robert Browning is about as fascinating as a Ryvita biscuit.
‘Practising my synonyms,’ I say in an injured tone, glancing at my notebook. I like ‘charlatan’, but is ‘charlatan’ the adjectival form or does it need a suffix?
She is survived by her charlatanous parents.
She is survived by her charlatanising parents.
How about ‘swindling’? No. None of them is right. I draw a line through ‘double-crossing’ and write ‘crazy’ instead.
‘Crazy’ encapsulates it. How my father philandered/cheated/double-crossed my mother by sleeping with an installation artist named Naomi and then moving with her to the other side of the country. How Mum philandered/cheated/double-crossed him back by having an affair with an actuary named Graham. How they’ve chosen to handle their break-up: with calm conversation when there should be shouting, tears and hospitalisation.
Since splitting, my parents get along better than before. They expect me to be happy about it, and happy about the mid-air commute.
‘Crazy’, ‘stupid’, ‘senseless’, ‘cracked’. Any of them will do.
‘We’re not looking at synonyms today, Will,’ Miss Fowler says, her expression fixed. ‘Now tell us, please, in what year did Browning publish My Last Duchess?’
From the corner of my eye I see Nat reach under her desk.
I rack my brain for the answer. ‘I know it was sometime in the mid-nineteenth century.’
‘I asked you for the year,’ says Miss Fowler.
‘1860?’
‘I’ve just gone through this.’
I can’t
