When were you first with a man? she asked.
Darcy stared into the soft white nape of her neck, pretended he was asleep.
Mount Eliza
Summer 1969
Darcy’s mother lay in bed reading Morris West and smoking, flicked ash into her hand then let it fall onto a crossword magazine. She was nicer in the mornings. Get me a drink will you Darcy?
He didn’t wear clothes in the summer when it was only the two of them, just his lace-up school shoes. He was only nine. He poured his mother a gin and tonic from the bottom of the desk in her bedroom, like he always did. Make it stiff, she said, then laughed as if at a joke.
His father had driven up to Melbourne in the kombi, delivering farm-fresh eggs to housewives in the city. He stayed for cups of coffee while their husbands were at work. He went every Tuesday, the day Darcy’s mother kept her son at home for company.
He put in a slice of lemon and balanced her drink on her trophy tray. She liked a fresh glass for her first drink of the morning, didn’t mind that the tonic was warm, as she propped herself up on a pillow and pushed back her hair. Feel free to wear some clothes, she said to him.
It’s too hot. He looked out into the garden with his hands on his hips, the cotoneaster bush standing by itself. I’m going to drive the car, he said.
The Austin’s battery had been taken out when his grandmother was still alive so she couldn’t get it started; she’d had accidents on Humphries Road, trouble on the hills. After she died they put the battery back in and parked it behind the shed. The first time Darcy drove it, he sat on a pouf so he could see over the dashboard. His mother got out of bed and stood at the window in her nightie, laughed out loud as he hit the side of the shed. He propped up the broken dahlias and bashed the tin out with a hammer before his father came home. You should have seen your face, his mother called from the window. The canvas awning above her looked like a big ripped hat.
He left her in the bedroom and put her cereal bowl with the dirty dishes on the kitchen bench, and as he did the top of a man’s head went by the window. There’s someone here, he called to his mother. He covered himself with a tea towel and opened the screen door. The man’s hair was chestnut and his suit an even redder brown, his tie had leaves all over it. Is it the Jesuits? his mother called out. Darcy wasn’t sure. The man had a fine silver necklace with a blue cross hanging from it.
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he said to Darcy nervously, and smiled. His nails were clean and even, not bitten like Darcy’s father’s or smoke-stained. He had a tattoo on the back of his hand.
Darcy turned as he called back so his mother could hear. It’s Jesus of the Saturday Saints.
Don’t let him in, she shouted.
The man didn’t move to come inside but stood at the bottom step. He had a ring on his thumb. We don’t have any money, Darcy told him.
I’m not selling anything, he said. He was from somewhere else, an accent like on television, a bit like Darcy’s mother’s, America or Canada. His tattoo was a coil of barbed wire, and when he saw Darcy looking he pulled up the cuff of his jacket to show him. It’s a crown of thorns, he said. Do you know what that is?
It’s from Jesus, said Darcy.
The man turned his hand over and opened his fingers—there was a rose tattooed on his palm, it looked like a real one. The Rose of Sharon, he said. His eyes were deep and brown, kinder than Darcy was used to.
Are you wearing any clothes? his mother shouted. Darcy could hear her getting out of bed.
Shoes, he shouted. But I’m covered.
She was coming up the hall. The man looked as though he knew what would happen as she brushed Darcy aside. We don’t need Jesus, she said, closing the door without even looking at the man. For Christ’s sake put some clothes on, she said to Darcy.
Through the sitting-room window Darcy watched the man walk down the drive. He took off his jacket and rested it on his arm, looked back but didn’t see Darcy there. His mother came in with a fresh drink from the bottle she hid behind the plastic bags. It was time for ice but no tonic.
He had a tattoo, Darcy told her.
Really, she said. Tight pants.
I think he was American. Like you.
They watched him disappear from view, hidden by the trees.
Not my kind of American.
What kind of American are you?
Miserable.
Darcy went to his desk in the corner and drew the coil of wire on the missionary’s hand in his sketchbook while his mother gazed out the window as if she were looking for something that wasn’t quite there. They were silent for what seemed like a long time. Darcy never knew whether to be quiet or to talk about things.
He had a rose in his hand, he said.
No he didn’t, she said, as though she was the one who had talked to him.
Darcy didn’t like it when she wouldn’t believe him but he kept his head down. The coil that he drew looked like a snake, the spikes like the bands on a python. She came over to see what he was doing and he wanted to shield it with his fingers but he knew not to. You should eat something, he said to change the subject. It was better if she ate.
Don’t talk about lunch unless you’re cooking it, she said. She looked at Darcy’s picture. What is that?
A crown of thorns, he said. He knew he should have said a snake, or a circle of climbing roses.
There are other ways to annoy me than believing in Jesus, she said. She put the cold glass against his ear.
Dad believes in Jesus, he said.
Your father’s not very bright, she said. She moved away as if distracted, leaned against the piano. Why don’t you sing something? she said. Or you could tap? It was always like this around lunchtime.
Tuesday’s my driving day, he said.
The red vinyl seat was hot against his bare skin, the mothball smell of his grandmother. He turned the key and pulled the choke to start it in gear so he didn’t have to reach for the pedals. As it jolted forward, he turned to avoid the compost heap. His mother wasn’t at the window so he steered across the dandelions and down the driveway, past the wattle stump and onto Baden Powell Drive. He’d never driven out on the road but he was compelled to see where the man in tight pants had gone, compelled in a way he didn’t understand. He steered down the hill so he didn’t need the accelerator but the car got loud and went too fast. He pushed the choke to stall it and ran into the ti-trees, jolting to a stop in the leaves not far from the Easterbrooks’ gate. The blinker was ticking, a branch pressed against the windscreen, smearing the bird dirt. Darcy wished he’d put some clothes on.
You okay? It was the missionary, kneeling at the window; Darcy hadn’t seen him coming. He cupped himself with his hands like he’d caught a small bird.
I won’t hurt you, said the missionary, but Darcy cupped his hands tighter, watched the leaves on the missionary’s tie and the cross on his chain as it balanced in the window. The speedometer rested at twenty mph as if they were going somewhere.
The missionary took out his wallet and showed Darcy a photo of a young red-haired boy, standing by a hollow tree with a Bible in his hands. That’s me, he said. In Indiana.
The boy was about Darcy’s age, short American hair. Darcy thought of the right to bare arms because that’s what his mother said they had in America, though Darcy didn’t know what it meant. He looked down at his own bare arms, his small white hands. He wondered if Indiana was close to California, where his mother was born, but he had a sense that it wasn’t.