‘And I’m trying to tell you, Mr Rock ’n’ Roll,’ said Mort, suddenly shouting and jabbing his finger at Howie, ‘that this business will run itself just fine if we stop listening to crooks and stick to Cacka’s philosophy.’
It was very quiet. Then there was a squeaking noise. The ping-pong table started to move in front of Benny’s nose. It pushed towards him, then withdrew. It was Cathy pushing with her big thighs. She had a bright little smile on her face.
‘Philosophy?’ she said. Her mouth was small in her big face and she had two hot spots on her pale cheeks. ‘What sort of philosophy would that be, Mort? Like Socrates? Like Mussolini? What sort of philosophy did you have in mind exactly?’
Mort said: ‘He was one of the greats.’ Benny looked down at the floor. He thought: don’t, please don’t.
‘Mort,’ Cathy said. ‘Say he was a creep. Admit it. It’s not your fault.’
‘He was human, but he was one of the greats.’
‘Look at us,’ Cathy said. There was a bang as she slammed her glass down on the table. Benedictine spilled. (Howie went to the kitchen to get a Wettex. Benny despised him for doing it.) ‘Look at us,’ Cathy said, watching Howie wipe the table. ‘We don’t know how to be happy. Look out of the window. We’re car dealers. That’s all we do. You cannot be a great car dealer.’
‘You can be a great boot-maker,’ Mort said.
Benny agreed. He took a facelette of Aloe-Vera and wiped the back of his hands. He thought: I will be a great car dealer.
Cathy took the Wettex from Howie and folded it and placed it on the table. Howie picked it up and took it out to the kitchen.
‘You want to talk about great,’ Cathy said. ‘Elvis was great.’
Mort laughed.
‘Hank Williams was great, but Christ, Morty, even if you could be a great car dealer, you could not be great and bankrupt at the same time.’
‘Spend some time with the books, Mort. I’d be happy to take you through them.’
‘Listen,’ Mort said. ‘I don’t like this business. I don’t think you like it either, but we’re stuck with it. If we want to save our arse, we should go back to Cacka’s principles.’
‘And what principles were you thinking of?’ Howie asked.
‘You remember Catchprice Motors, Cathy?’ Mort asked his sister. ‘We didn’t wind our speedos back. We paid our taxes. We told the truth.’
‘Why do you mime the words of the hymns in church?’ Howie asked.
Mort looked at him, his mouth loose.
‘I just meant to ask you,’ Howie said. ‘I wondered why you won’t sing out loud. Barry Peterson asked me why someone with such a good voice wouldn’t sing out loud. I wondered if this had something to do with Cacka’s philosophy.’
‘Shut up, Howie,’ Cathy said.
‘What I’m getting to,’ Mort said, his neck now blazing red above his white overall collar, ‘is Cacka paid his taxes. He’d have shut the doors if he couldn’t pay his taxes.’
‘Mort,’ said Cathy, more gently than before, ‘Franklin has changed.’
‘If it’s changed so much we have to be cheats, I’d rather run some little garage up at Woop-woop. I’d rather be on the dole.’
‘You might get your wish,’ Cathy said.
‘How?’ asked Benny.
They all looked at him. For a moment the only noise came from the rattling air-conditioner.
‘What?’ Cathy said, frowning at him.
‘How will my father get his wish?’
‘What this conversation is about, Benjamin, is that we are being investigated by the Taxation Department.’
‘I know that.’
‘And by the time they have finished with us, we’ll have to sell the business to pay them back.’
‘So, what are you going to do, Cathy?’ Benny asked.
‘Don’t speak to your auntie like that.’
‘No,’ Benny insisted, ‘what are you going to do to protect us? What positive steps can be taken towards realizing our desires?’ He blushed and stood up. They were all staring at him. Not one of them had any idea of who he was and what it was he had quoted to them. Howie was smirking, but none of them had any plan appropriate to their situation. In their shiny suits and frills and oily overalls, they were creatures at the end of an epoch. The climate had changed and they were puzzled to find the familiar crops would no longer grow. He stood up. He was full of light. They saw him, but did not see him, for the best and most vital part of him was already walking down the path towards the actualization of his desires. I am new. I am born now. Even while they stared at him across the bottle-stained emptiness of the ping-pong table, he was descending the staircase, not the one that led to his physical actual cellar – not the metal staircase with its perforated treads, the oil-stained ladder with the banister he must not touch – but the other staircases which are described in seven audio cassettes, Actualizations and Affirmations 1–14.
He was descending the blue staircase (its treads shimmering like oil on water, its banisters clear, clean, stainless steel) and all they could think was that he had no right to wear a suit.
At the bottom of the blue staircase he found the yellow staircase.
At the bottom of the yellow staircase, the pink.
At the bottom of the pink, the ebony.
At the end of the ebony, the Golden Door.
Beyond the Golden Door was the Circular Room of Black Marble.
In the centre of the Circular Room of Black Marble he visualized a Sony Trinitron.
Benny turned on the Sony Trinitron and saw there the vivid picture of what it was he desired: all the books and ledgers of Catchprice Motors, wrapped in orange garbage bags and sealed with silver tape.
‘Leave it to me,’ he said out loud.
By then he was already walking across the crushed gravel of the car yard. His father was a yard ahead of him.
‘What?’ he said.
14
Maria’s image of herself was made in all the years before 15 July, the day she finally discovered that she was pregnant. No matter what kicks the baby gave her, no matter how it squirmed and rolled and pushed and made her lumpy and off-centre, no matter how her legs ached, her back hurt, irrespective of the constipation, haemorrhoids and insomnia, the fine webs of spider veins and stretch marks that threatened to make her old and ugly overnight, she could still forget what her body had actually become. She could look in the mirrors as she entered the birth class and be surprised to see a short, big-bellied woman.
There were also other times when she knew exactly what she looked like and then she felt that she had been that way for ever, and then it was almost impossible to remember that it had only been on 15 July last year that she had discovered she was pregnant.
On 15 July she still had beer and wine in her refrigerator, no milk. She made her last cup of strong black coffee, not even bothering to taste it properly, and slipped into her quilted ‘Afghan’ skirt and embroidered black silk blouse not guessing that before five weeks had passed the $220 skirt would be unwearable.
Her period was late, but her period was often late, or early. She stopped in Darling Street, Balmain, and spent $15 on a pregnancy test kit and drove over the Harbour Bridge to Crows Nest where she was auditing a property developer. It wasn’t until after lunch she found the pregnancy test kit in her handbag.
In the property developer’s white bathroom she saw a slender phial of her urine turn a pretty violet colour.
She sat it on the window ledge and shook her head at it. Such was her capacity for denial that she assumed the kit was faulty and at three o’clock she spent another $15 on a second kit and got the same result.