My mother has expressed her concern at our practice of allowing the boys out to play unsupervised in the neighbourhood. She once discussed it with me in the garden, where only the magpies and I could hear her.
‘It was fine when you were young,’ she said, with her thin, tanned voice. ‘But things aren’t the same these days.’
‘They never go more than three blocks away,’ I told her. ‘And we have Neighbourhood Watch.’
‘You know I don’t often comment on your parenting,’ she said, looking around the garden, from fence to fence, window to window, as if scouting for disguised dangers about which I know nothing.
The boys’ social life may be confined to two or three streets but it’s still complex, fluid, and frequently involves Glenda and me in unexpected situations. James, then, on this hot afternoon, experiencing the injustice of being barred from home, the humid repetitive earthbound feeling of not occupying the ocean floor: James goes in search of his brother on his silver-pedalled bicycle. As soon as he received this bicycle from his grandparents — for no reason, I might add, it just arrived one day — James customised it with stickers of half-men, half-monsters. Glenda’s reaction to the stickers was: ‘Your grandfather gave you that bike and he isn’t going to like these.’ I couldn’t tell you the exact moment Glenda began living as if my parents were watching her every move through secret cameras embedded in unnecessary gifts.
‘This one is especially gruesome,’ I said, inspecting a particular sticker. It featured something green which appeared muscular despite its delicate tentacles.
‘I know,’ said James, conspiratorial. ‘He doesn’t eat. He photosynthesises.’
This is the bike James rides away on, basically homeless. That’s how his head seems — small and homeless. I look at the china cabinet, then at Glenda.
‘You can take the boys to the hardware store tomorrow,’ she says. ‘They love it there.’
That’s true. Even Greg never fails to be impressed by the number of small shiny things in the world.
* * *
This is what I think happened. James found his brother one street away at the Wolfsons’, and Greg was unhappy to see him. The accumulating sorrow — evicted from home and now unwelcomed by a brother. I know the Wolfsons’ yard well because I’ve negotiated it when tipsy. It’s all paving, swimming pool, and plants in pots. Bev Wolfson holds parties lit by candles and the moist glow of this obstacle-course greenery. Glenda and I wonder if their plants are fake because we’re jealous of their swimming pool, despite the temporary feel of its above-ground installation.
‘Imagine having a swimming pool like that,’ says Glenda. ‘I’d spend all day in it, naked.’
My answer to this is that I would reapply her sun cream.
This is the world of patio foliage and older boys that James has entered, the flimsy pool full of children, water coming over the side like surf. Greg damp but dressed and ready to leave, the brief argument, James sullen and imploring, Bev Wolfson shimmying around with towels and Diet Coke and painted toenails. Greg is unimpressed at James’s arrival because he has plans to meet his friend Tony, whose older brother is a shopping- centre security guard. When were these plans made? Some interior minute we couldn’t monitor. Greg makes phone calls when we least expect it, curling his entire body around the phone, giving and taking quick instructions and behaving afterward as if nothing has happened. He sends emails from my computer. Every now and then I surprise him at my desk, looking like a small efficient workday version of me. At any given moment he could be making arrangements to meet up with a security guard one Friday when we are tired and lax and stunned by the end of the week.
A street away, safely at the Wolfsons’, Greg is shrugging his shoulders and agreeing to let James come along to an empty shopping centre. There are times when he shrugs that way at me too, slouchy and resigned. It’s like I’m literally on his back. Then he shrugs and I’m off.
The bicycle stays at the Wolfsons’ because Tony’s security- guard brother has a car. Bev Wolfson will find the bike later, after the rainstorm, stickers wet and peeling, collapsed among the pot plants in a blur of mosquitoes. The police report doesn’t give the colour of Tony’s brother’s car; let’s say it’s blue. My first car was blue — almost navy. It shook on the highways and leaked in every kind of weather. My parents wanted to buy me a new one, but I insisted on paying for my own. Glenda filled it with apple cores and covered the door of the glove compartment with the fruit’s stickers. Tony’s brother’s car is only minimally insured because the sound system is worth more than the car itself. This is the kind of information you can pick up about a person. Glenda’s sister works in an insurance call centre and we had her check him out. She typed his name into the system with those long pearly artificial nails that make her do everything with the last-minute flicks of a flamenco dancer. Tony’s brother drives his car to work, although he could walk; the shopping centre is only three blocks from his house, through the roundabout at Hughes Road and across the car park. It’s true these places aren’t designed for pedestrians. Who knows what might happen to security guards, leaving shopping centres alone on foot at dawn.
Tony sits up front and our boys climb into the back. They fasten their seat belts without being asked, just as they always do. Tony’s brother looks over his shoulder from the driver’s seat. He’s good-looking, sports promising jowls, grooms a bit of stubble, and wears a zip-up jacket.
He asks, ‘How old is this kid, anyway?’
‘Eight,’ says Greg.
At the same time as James says, ‘I’m eight.’
* * *
The boys have been to this shopping centre hundreds of times, but not when it’s empty and not behind the scenes. They’ll enjoy this, James because he likes knowing how things work, Greg because he likes knowing things other people don’t. Tony’s brother takes the boys into a room and says, ‘This is my office.’ James and Greg both know it isn’t exactly an office. They’ve visited me at work. But there are more interesting things to touch here: switches, telephones, television screens. James finds a map of the shopping centre and walks his fingers around it. He’s particularly good with maps. He brings them home from school and sits at the kitchen table to colour them in. This, I think, is what our table was made for. James enjoys school in the same way that Greg enjoys ball sports. This week he has learned about unusual underwater animals. Dense, dark-water fish with built-in light globes. Poisonous rockpool octopi. Sea lilies.
What if we’d had two girls? Bev Wolfson has two girls, twins just a little older than Greg. Last time I saw them, they were in the kitchen sharing headphones, each with a pod in one ear, jumping up and down in sync. Glenda would like a girl — it’s something she’d like, but doesn’t feel she needs.
‘You know what,’ she’s said more than once, ‘one day your mother will walk in here and give me one, gift-wrapped.’
‘All right, boys,’ says Tony’s brother. ‘Let’s take a walk.’
Now that they’re in the shopping centre it doesn’t matter what time of day it is. The lights are dimmed and for hours it will be evening. The place looks as if it’s just been evacuated after a disaster warning. James is thinking about the time. I know he thinks about it because it’s often a topic of conversation for him.
‘In a minute,’ he’ll say while I’m combing my hair or brushing my teeth, ‘Mum’s going to come in here and tell you we’re late.’
And she does.
Greg is walking up front with Tony’s brother. Tony’s on the loose, stopping and starting, running ahead, falling behind. It’s like he’s playing tennis with himself. He’s one of those kids. He gets nosebleeds, but on him they look macho: blood on his lip, making fists. He’s chunky and quick, checking things out. He’ll exchange a few words with James.