Chapter 25 #3
But even if there’s no unravelling of Anna Calogero, something has shifted in the way she speaks to me.
I can detect it immediately. She’s not trying to control and manage me the way she usually would.
If I had a messy pantry in this hospital room, she would no longer try to rearrange it.
Her arms are crossed over her body and she looks at me like I’m a foreigner.
She’s seen who I really am now. I’m too impure to be associated with her.
‘I tried so hard with you,’ she says stiffly. ‘Everything I ever did was for you, Zekey. You were so courteous when you were little. You could have had the best things in life.’
This is why Sabrina sets me off, too. If there’s one thing both she and my mother can agree on, it’s that I would be amazing if I did what I was told to reach my potential. But I feel tremendous relief she said ‘tried’, past tense. It means she is no longer trying.
‘You would have loved me to be a lawyer or a doctor, wouldn’t you?’ I suggest. ‘Super impressive. Rich. With a nice wife.’
She looks at me, exasperated. ‘You’re going to tell me that was wrong? I wanted for you what any mother would want for a son.’
‘Did it ever occur to you I didn’t want a life like that?’ I ask. ‘That I might have my own personality? That I might want to just be myself?’
‘That’s silly. You had the brains to get the very best. Why wouldn’t you want that?’
This is the crux of it. What she sees as an ideal life is what I see as death. We will never agree, and trying to dance around this has warped everything. To me, she failed as a mother; to her, I failed as a son.
‘I’m going to find a flat for myself,’ I tell her. ‘You can get a place in Perth, but I won’t be living there.’
My mother frowns. ‘Well, we talked about buying a beach house in Kalbarri – we might do that instead,’ she says coolly. ‘We could rent it out as an Airbnb. Robbie and Nattie and Bianca could go there with us on school holidays. All five of us together. That’s nicer than Dianella.’
It is such a relief to be discarded by her, which is what this is. We’re all going on a family holiday and you’re not invited. Good. Let Robbie be micromanaged by her instead.
‘That sounds good,’ I say. ‘I hope you guys have an awesome time up there.’
My mother appraises me, then clops over to my bedside in her heels and kisses the top of my head curtly.
‘You know, every Sunday at mass, I think of you, darling. You were such a sensitive boy. You would sing hymns at church with me, do you remember? Gloria in excelsis Deo. You had the sweetest, most angelic choirboy voice. I loved how you sounded when you sang with me. You remember that, don’t you? ’
‘Yes,’ I admit. ‘Then I hit puberty, and my voice broke.’
My mother’s eyes well up. ‘It did. That’s right.
It broke.’ She turns away from me, spotting the snacks on the table, and the fleeting glimpse of emotion is gone.
‘I got you some things from the hospital shop, darling,’ she says breezily.
‘A nice flat white, but they didn’t have sugar packets.
And an apple crumble muffin but it’s a bit dry-looking.
And something to read while you’re in hospital, of course. ’
She plops the coffee cup and muffin on the wheely tray table over my bed, along with the glossy car magazine Wheels I’d assumed was for Dad.
‘Huh?’ I blurt out. ‘That’s – You got that … for me?’
No more Archie comics. I’ve finally graduated to car magazines like my father and my brother.
Anna Calogero purses her lips and fixes me with her sharp frown. ‘What are you being funny about, darling? I always bring you something to read!’
Her frown, just for a moment, breaks, and I could swear her face softens into a smile so quick and surreptitious I doubt whether it happened at all.
I stare at the car magazine. The cover says I can look forward to an article about supercharged cars ahead of Bathurst. I don’t think I’ve ever been less interested in anything in my life, but somehow this is the kindest gift my mother has ever brought me.
‘That’s really good of you, Mum,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’
When Siobhan does my obs in the early arvo, my blood is fully saturated with oxygen: ninety-nine per cent.
‘You’re clear to go, sweetheart,’ Siobhan says. ‘Are your parents dropping you home?’
I shake my head. ‘Nah. I have other family picking me up.’
Siobhan beams at me, about to wheel her trolley out into the corridor, then adds, like it’s somehow important to her, ‘It’s really nice to know some of you country boys do find your way, Zeke. Take care of yourself, won’t you?’
She leaves, her face set in a resting smile.
I change into Hammer’s hoodie and footy shorts – both baggy on me – and head outside into broad sunlight, where Charlie’s car is idling in a bus bay, his knuckle-tattooed hand dangling a lit cigarette from the window.
I open the passenger seat and get in beside him. The car smells of tobacco and Monster Energy. Eau de Charlie Roth.
‘Hey, dude,’ Charlie says, eyes flicking over my face. ‘You okay?’
‘Nup,’ I say. ‘You?’
‘Hell no,’ Charlie says. ‘Can’t be fucked talking about it either. I’m fried.’
‘Same.’
‘I don’t wanna be in the house right now. Not while Ahmed’s family’s with him. Feels wrong. I need to forget about it for a bit. You wanna just go for a drive?’
I nod and put my seatbelt on. Charlie hands me his phone to pick a song from Spotify. He never gives up aux cord privileges that easy, not to anyone.
‘Don’t make me regret it,’ he says warningly, driving us up to the pedestrian crossing traffic light, which is red.
I scroll through Spotify and choose the perfect song. An early-2000s Kylie Minogue track starts blaring from Charlie’s speakers, and he bursts out laughing.
‘Reminds me of a wedding I went to once,’ he says. ‘Turn that shit off right now.’
‘Absolutely not,’ I say, turning the volume up louder. The light goes green. ‘Gun the engine, you massive poofter.’