John Marsden - Incurable

I didn’t intervene much, as although I was seeing Lee in a new light, I was pretty sure that some things were still the same, and one of those things was that Lee wouldn’t like being shown up, or given any hints that I thought he was making a mess of it.

When the kids were in bed though, which took an exhausting forty-five minutes — and that was without baths — we sat down and had coffees at the kitchen table. It was funny, there was no hint of sex or relationship stuff in the air. There wasn’t a good atmosphere for that kind of conversation after the noise and conflict of the kids. I was more than happy to avoid it anyway, given that my thoughts were about Jeremy these days, although every time I looked at Lee I couldn’t help thinking how attractive he was.

‘It must be pretty tough living with them all the time,’ I said, hoping this wouldn’t put him into defensive mode.

‘Tell me about it,’ he grunted, with his nose buried in the coffee.

‘How do you get any work done?’

‘I don’t. Well, a little bit, after they go to bed, but I don’t have much energy after putting up with them all night.’

‘It seems kind of weird to see you in a car park fighting enemy soldiers one day and then the next day you’re fighting with Phillip over who does the washing-up.’

He looked up and grinned. I was relieved to see that he hadn’t lost his sense of humour. ‘I’d rather be doing stuff with Liberation than trying to get them to shut up and stop fighting for five minutes.’

‘What’s happening with Liberation? Are there any missions coming up? Has there been any more fallout over our last effort? Jeremy gave me a bit of an update the other day.’

Woops, there it was, I’d said the magic word, after I’d tried so hard to avoid it. Two minutes into the conversation and already Jeremy was there. But Lee didn’t seem to notice.

‘You have no idea,’ he said.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘No idea how nasty they were. What they were planning.’

‘So no-one’s blaming us?’

‘It did get a bit sensitive,’ he admitted. There were some heavy vibes about shooting up so many people in a public place. Seems like they’d have been a lot happier if we’d done it in the bush with no witnesses.’

‘That’s quite chilling. Makes us sound like serial killers.’

We’ve killed a lot of people between us, Ellie.’

I scratched the coffee mug with my finger. ‘I can’t think about it but sometimes I have to. I got so sick of the smell of blood. I still haven’t gotten over that smell.’

‘Well, most of the people we killed were soldiers, if not all of them, but you know what puzzles me? When they say on the news that there’s been a bomb blast or something, they say, “Dozens of people were killed, including some innocent civilians.” Now what does that mean? That all soldiers are guilty, so it doesn’t matter if you kill them? That all civilians are innocent? What, do they run a check on each person’s life and then decide if he should have been allowed to live? How many of those innocent civilians were, like, drug dealers or rapists or people who don’t look after their pets properly? I guess if you or I were killed in a random bomb blast at a bus stop they’d say we were innocent civilians, but I don’t feel too innocent these days.’

I loved and needed these conversations and Lee was very good at them, but I also needed some good advice. I’d told him on the phone why we were coming to the city, but I’d only given him an outline, so now I told him the full story, including the cat. All his tolerance and wisdom immediately deserted him.

‘God, that little toad, that little toad sucker. What the hell is he playing at? Honestly, Ellie, that kid doesn’t know when he’s well off. Put him in a postbag and pack him off to… I don’t know

…’

‘Paraguay? The Philippines? Is this tongue-twister time?’

‘Yeah, any of those’ll do nicely. Patagonia.’

‘Parramatta.’

I soon realised what was happening. Lee was like the others, so caught up with his own troubles, looking after the kids and trying to study, that he didn’t have time for my problems with Gavin. It was disappointing. I could see how fair that was, but sometimes fairness doesn’t count when you want help from a friend. Although we kept talking about Gavin, it was one of those awful conversations where you suddenly realise you’re sounding like your parents. ‘These little kids, they’re so cheeky, they orta show more respect…’

Not that my parents ever talked like that, but my grandmother did, using slightly different words. She’d never have said ‘orta’.

I could hardly eat breakfast for the nervousness I felt about this reunion between Gavin and his sister. In a way it wasn’t my business but of course it was too. Not long ago I’d told Gavin he was my brother, but I hadn’t known then that I was about to join an extended family.

When I thought about it I realised that a lot of my nervousness was to do with wanting him to handle the situation the right way. It’s hard to describe how this works but I knew I’d be upset if Gavin screwed up. I’d felt the same when I watched him at the school athletics: I didn’t want him to come last because I figured he’d feel bad. When he was with other kids, if he did anything that was uncool that had them frowning and turning away, I wanted to run over and say to him, ‘No, not like that, that’s not how you do it,’ and to say to the other kids, ‘Hey, he’s OK, you just misunderstood, he is cool really, really he is.’

I had the horrible feeling that he was going to say the wrong thing to his little sister, or the people who were looking after her, and that because of this he would miss out on a whole series of future possibilities.

If I was stressed, Gavin was a disaster zone. Not in a million years would he admit to being nervous but you didn’t have to be a psychologist to figure it out. You don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Gavin wouldn’t get dressed, said something evil to Intira that had her screaming and running to Lee, broke a cereal bowl and wouldn’t eat breakfast anyway, then told me I was a stupid bitch when I did the ‘Enough already, quit it or I’ll take you to the zoo and feed you to meerkats.’

Rather than have one or both of us explode, I got him out of the apartment and told him we’d walk to Marlon. He didn’t seem to mind that. We left so early that we could have walked backwards and still been on time, but at least he was not in a confined space. Even so, he didn’t get any better. It was weird, I couldn’t help feeling that there was something else going on, something more than his natural nerves at this big change in his life. I started trying to guess what it might be but my imagination couldn’t grip onto much. I thought maybe he was worried I’d leave him there, that once he was with Rosie and the Russells I’d nick off to the nearest bus stop and go bush. I hoped he didn’t have such a bad opinion of me, but he was an insecure kid. The thing was though, that even if he did think that, it still didn’t explain the way he was carrying on. To be honest, it was like I didn’t matter much to him that morning. His mind was on something else, something more than a reunion. I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what it might be.

If I had known what it was I would have grabbed him then and there and run hard in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately I’d put the pressure on him to make this trip and he’d given in to the pressure. It would have been better if he’d resisted a bit more, even though I wouldn’t have thanked him for it at the time.

It was easy enough to get to Marlon, you just follow Fiddleback Road. It goes forever. And Gavin was confident that once we got to Marlon he knew how to find Green Street. Besides, we could always ask. But navigation was never an issue. The first clue I got that we were getting close was the North Marlon Tyre Service, followed by Marlon North Dry Cleaning, North Marlon Pizza and North Marlon Car Wash. We still had nearly forty-five minutes to go, so that was fine.