Sweeties. Leon Silver
body stiffens, he looks away then back, rubs his scratchy eyes letting go of the pyjamas that tumble to his ankles – it isn’t Dad at all, this back is too hairy and too white … then … confirmation! The man lifts his head and speaks, Abel’s burning eyes snap open – it’s not Dad’s voice, not Dad at all, it’s Bernie, Margaret’s husband: Your cunt drips honey, honey. Then complete confirmation: Bernie’s trademark horse laugh: I could lick this sweetness forever … Old Abel in his excitement machine is swamped with the realisation: his lifelong aversion to honey was hatched that afternoon, but honey is the last thing on young Abel’s mind as Mum, with a sudden twist of head, sees a wedge of Abel’s stooped, half-naked reflection in the long mirror. Then as though a director had yelled ACTION! Mum, with a much louder OH MY GOD, bolts upright; Bernie, head clamped, is thrown off and lands sideways crushing kitty Ginger beneath him, and Abel shoots back to his room, jumps into bed, and hides under the blankets … and old Abel in the car scrambles under a blanket of lingering shame, massaging that long ago healed sunburn … if he could re-write the game rules he’d have gladly suffered that severe sunburn for the rest of his life, if Ginger could have lived, and Mum and Dad had stayed as they were on that sunny Brady Bunch barbecue afternoon … And when Jill, so many years later, made him that once-in-a-lifetime offer of dumping Abel and becoming Jackson, that boyhood bedroom image had played foremost on his adult mind – that fever-dazed boy standing, forever clutching his pyjama pants – the steel ball of his life bouncing off in an irretrievable direction.
Young Abel tries to picture smiley faces on the white clouds drifting overhead, everyone is talking and laughing and wearing nice clothes including him, but he can’t embrace the high spirit and in fact, resents the clouds, such heartless happiness! and old Abel, sitting in his steamy car, ignoring the white female phantom calling from behind, feels just as reticent, but the two Abels do have one solid ally in this sense of foreboding, the only tight-lipped one not openly celebrating is Granny Annie: she isn’t examining clouds, or dragging feet like her grandson, but is in fact standing too still, losing track of what we call movement she watches Abel from the edge of the celebrating crowd as he intently investigates the drifting cumulus masses, and then – as though it is at all possible – the scene on the wide, high front steps of the town hall is about to get even happier – Brady Bunch eat your heart out – Mum and Bernie come out, clutching hands, smiling and waving to everyone, and so, exactly, do Dad and Margaret. Mum and Margaret, in bright dresses, carrying bunches of flowers, and Dad and Bernie, in suits and ties and brown shoes, part as couples, Dad and Bernie shake hands and clap on backs, Mum and Margaret kiss, then the two couples reform, so that family and friends, gathered along the steps, line up to hug them and throw rice and white flowers, which signals to Granny Annie to finally recall her mobility – she walks over to Abel and his sisters who hang about on the sidelines – the sisters watching Abel watching nothing – and Granny Annie corrals Abel, Rose and Mary and pushes them forward to hug their parents’ knees, but that presents a logistical problem: their Mum’s knees are next to Bernie’s, and Dad’s knees are next to Margaret’s; Mum twists sideways to kiss Bernie, Dad, copycat, kisses Margaret, then again Mum kisses Margaret, and Dad and Bernie clap each other on the back, so blissful that they’d plum forgot they’d already done that five minutes earlier; young Abel is bewildered and wonders: Why are they giving each other a pat on the back? What have they done to deserve that? But the boy can’t dwell too long on this unwarranted behaviour, he’s too busy reviewing in his head the barriers he’d implanted there to reject Mum and Dad’s recent talks with him and his two sisters in the last few weeks – yep, the shields are up and intact and he has no trouble dumping those one-way dialogues straight into the rubbish bin … Mum and Dad, in cheerful tears, had smiled and kissed and cuddled him and Rose and Mary, but what they said fell like sharp, dead words, without even a touch of life or colour; Abel slinking through those thorny words, contorting right and left and not one syllable pricked his skin like the thorny bougainvillaea; his sisters refused to understand what their parents were talking about, looking to their big brother for orientation or total rejection; their silence held together until the three kids were alone in his room, even as Abel dragged his two sisters onto his bed, hugged them and cried and they cried because he was crying – whimpering like injured puppies – because Abel had his finger across his lips for silence and his two sisters would do anything, absolutely anything, for Abel – with big teary eyes and fingers across their lips they stared at him in the dark room, and knew that things were bad, if their superhero brother was crying, things were very bad indeed. For the past couple of weeks he’d secretly listened behind the lounge-room door to the argy-bargy of his parents and their best friends, Bernie and Margaret, their meetings over many hours, at first harsh, accusing, raised, angry voices, but then softer, reconciliatory declarations, even laughter, signed off by clinking glasses and Bernie’s horsey laugh, all cumulating in this mongrel town hall gathering. Abel’s sisters’ regimented lead-following on his bed is no different now on the town hall steps as the three stand in a row, with dead arms, sneering. Too much hair ruffling and arm squeezing had followed the talks that only served to confirm to young Abel that this was all bullshit, they’d been sold a dud, and he pictured the worst of all scenarios: the nightmare of Dad, Bernie, Abel and John, Bernie’s son, on the forest’s grassy earth, squeezed inside one sleeping bag in the small tent, but he can’t dwell too much on that dreadful image as Bernie bends down and firmly shakes his hand and neighs: I love you like a son … we’ll have some great times together … Shrinking away from Bernie, Rose and Mary squint up at their older brother and pull down on his arms to explain to them what’s going on, but there’s no interval to clarify the proceedings as Dad – their real dad – smile widespread, leaves Margaret and comes over, kneeling down to Abel’s level, and looks into his son’s eyes and his lips move but his words jam up like a train at a dysfunctional railway crossing; after some coughing, Dad’s words make a clunky noise inside Abel’s head, but the boom gate stays down. Rose and Mary finally loosen their grip on their older brother as they climb onto Dad’s knees and hang from his neck like they’re drowning and he’s a lifesaver, but Margaret turns out to be the real lifesaver in this shipwreck as she comes over and untangles the two crying girls and rescues her new husband who’s fixated trance-like on Abel, the young boy silently stepping back with dropped chin, while Granny Annie presses her arms to her side so as to stay motionless again, because any movement – even the minimum – might unleash punches to her son’s head … There’s a party of course, the six kids sitting together in their best clothes at their own table – if this was meant as a display of solidarity, it actually has the reverse effect: John stabs Abel with dirty looks for stealing his dad, and Abel kicks him under the table with his new solid black shoes, John’s eyes fill with silent tears but he more than deserves the pain, because Abel’s stolen dad is a million times better than John’s dumb dad who does nothing but laugh like a horse and squash cats to death.
The adults eat, drink and laugh, ignoring the catastrophe in front of them; these two new unions are jinxed from their genesis; why, otherwise, would Granny Annie have placed on the long white tables – like stepping stones to salvation or doom – plates with her usual selection of sweeties to balance out the nasties of life? His twin sisters hang back, their older brother hasn’t reached out to the central offerings either, and the girls suspect that indeed there are no good times to celebrate here. Mum, watching from the head table with a slowly shrinking smile, leaning forward, fingers nervously strumming the table while watching her mother-in-law’s plate distribution as though instead of deliverance these are indeed rumblings signalling an impending disaster – the same mum who never stops lecturing about the evils of Granny Annie’s sugar plates – gets up, takes a plate in each hand, walks over to their table and extends them as a peace offering, but to Abel it’s more like a stab in the heart. Abel’s eyes look up from the hovering plates to his mother’s crinkled-smile face, then slumps; no way in hell is he accepting a substitute prize for their stolen life, even the most gigantic plate of sweeties will not balance out the nasties this time. Rose and Mary, both hands stopped while reaching out to their mother’s offering, drop their hands to the white tablecloth with a soundless thump that makes Mum shudder, powerless before her kids’ united rejection.
Mum turns to Granny Annie and locks into a moment’s standoff that lingers for hours – as though blaming