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“I think she’s having a hard time,” Georgie says.
He doesn’t say anything, because no one gave his mother, Jacinta, a harder time than Tom. He had refused to go to Brisbane with her, even though he was flunking uni, because there was no way he was leaving his father behind. She said it would only be for a few weeks while his father sorted himself out, so Anabel wouldn’t be affected bywhat was going on with Dominic’s drinking. That was a year ago.
“She did the right thing going up there,” Georgie says. “Jacinta needed to be with her mother, no matter how much your grandma Agnes goes on.”
He goes to light up a cigarette and offers her one, but he knows she’ll say no.
“Outside,” she orders, and he’s close enough for her to reach out and touch his face.
“You look awful, Tommy.”
“Can I stay?” he asks again, and there’s pleading in his voice. He knows she can’t resist him. Not Georgie. Her obsession with her brothers, Dominic and Joe, continued on with Tom and his sister, Anabel.
“No drugs and only if you get a job.”
“You’d think I was a junkie the way you go on. It’s weed, Georgie.Less harmful than booze.”
“Don’t give me a lecture about drugs and alcohol. I told your father the same thing. He can come back here, but not if he’s drinking.”
“Well, he better not fucking come while I’m staying.”
“And stop swearing.”
“Yeah, ’cause you’ve never sworn in your life.”
He takes the coffee from her, needing fresh air because if he doesn’t get out of this room, he’ll suffocate from memories. He’s felt like that for more than a month now. There’s no particular reason for it, but sometimes he feels like he can’t breathe, like his body is shutting down. Two weeks back, he rang Na
“It’s called grief, my beautiful boy,” she had murmured over the phone. When Tom was born, Grace and Bill were still in their early forties. There was no Grandma and Grandpa for them. Na
But he didn’t get the grief thing. It had been two years since Joe’s death and all of a sudden it was there again.
“Ring your mother, Tommy,” his nan had sighed. There were no in-law issues in his family. His mum and Na
“How’s Auntie G?” he’d asked, as if he hadn’t heard what she’d said.
“Everyone’s saying she’s pregnant.”
That had surprised him. “Why don’t you just ask her?”
“Because Georgie will tell everyone when she’s ready, and we have to honor that.”
“So when her water breaks and she’s in labor, you’ll pretend to sound shocked when she a
Na
“Whose is it?” Tom had asked, referring to the baby.
“Sam’s.”
“Shit. Does it get any more complicated than that?”
Later, he goes inside and Georgie’s already upstairs. He doesn’t want to ask whether he gets the attic. He figures he’ll just take it and sort things out himself, but when he reaches the third floor, Georgie’s already left sheets and blankets on the bed. The room is a memory fucker. The first thing he sees is the Slade LP stuck on the mirror where he left it that night two years ago. Then he sees the Joe Satriani Surfing with the Alien poster. The hyperventilating starts again and he can’t get the window to work. He bolts down the stairs but doesn’t get past Georgie’s room. She’s on the floor, rummaging through the chest at the foot of the bed. She’s anxious in her searching, and although she’s his aunt and twenty years older than him, her expression is like a kid’s. Like his sister’s when she was scared and nobody but Tom’s dad could calm her down.
“What are you looking for, Georgie?”
She doesn’t answer, as though she can’t hear him, and he walks in and sits on the floor in front of her. She’s holding a small green square of cloth attached to a necklace of the same material. “Is it religious?” he asks, feeling its texture.
She nods. “It’s a scapular. Kind of a Catholic token of devotion.” There are two of them. “This belonged to Dominic,” she explains. She laughs. “They’re a bit outdated now.”
Tom spent a lot of time trying not to think of his father, and most times he failed because Dominic’s name kept coming up in conversation. There’s always someone Tom comes across in the area who wants to know where Dom Mackee is. Everyone loves Dominic. They should do a sitcom about him. Stanmore’s favorite son and husband and brother and friend and father.
“He’d force me to tie it around my undershirt strap when we were kids,” she says. “Your pop Bill would always say that they’d be able to identify our father’s body in Vietnam one day because Tom Finch wore his scapular tied around his undershirt strap. So Dominic and I had to be the same.”
Tom swallows hard. His pop Bill had mentioned something about Tom Finch a month ago, when they last spoke.
“Is it true what they’re saying? About finding Tom Finch’s body soon?” he asked.
Her eyes bore into his.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Saw it on the news. How those old-timer vets found two of the others guys back in June. They reckon it’ll be Tom Finch soon.”
She’s still looking at him, scapular gripped in her hand. He can tell. This is the begi
Not after Joe.
“Pop Bill sounds choked up every time he brings it up.”
“They were best friends, Bill and Tom Finch,” she says. “Knew each other all their lives.”
And they both fell in love with Na
“Do you think it’s true,” he asks, “about the scapular?”
She shrugs. “Don’t know. But when we were kids, Dominic wouldn’t go anywhere without it. It’s like he thought if he was wearing it, maybe Tom Finch would find us somehow.”
He sighs, standing up. There are too many subjects he wants to avoid. “Thanks for the sheets and stuff.”
There’s a soft smile on her face. “When I walked into the attic, it was the first time I didn’t think of it being Joe’s room,” she says. “I thought of those gorgeous girls you used to hang out with in high school and at uni. What was the name of the one whose mother worked at the Red Cross before me? She stayed here one night and you both looked . . . I don’t know . . . frisky.”
“Tara,” he says, his voice husky. “She’s in Timor.”
Tara Finke, whose voice was suddenly stuck in his head, “Talk to me, Thomas. Just talk to me.” If he was going to dream up any words from her, they’d be angry ones, not ones said with such empathy.
“Do you want me to make you something to eat?” she asks.
He nods. He doesn’t know whether it’s the food or the normalcy of it all, but he follows her down and watches as she tosses some veggies and chicken around in a wok. They eat in silence, but it’s a better silence than he’s used to, and then he goes to bed and he lies there studying the photos he carries around. One belongs to him and the other two belong to his father, but Dominic Mackee left them behind like he left everything behind when he nicked off. Tom’s favorite is of Na