Read Online Nature of Ash, The by Mandy Hager - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Mandy Hager
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Thanks …’
Mikey punches air. ‘Yus!’
‘But just for now,’ she says. ‘If things get worse, I’m heading for the hills.’
‘You and me both.’ For the first time we smile at each other, before she goes all red and looks away. Good job. I’d hate for her to notice that I’m blushing too.
‘You want to come with me to pick up my things?’ she says to Mikey, and I have the feeling she’s asked him so I’ll get a break.
Mikey bolts straight to the door.
The flat is eerily quiet once they’re gone. I just wander from room to room, not knowing what to do. I feel ninety … no, two thousand — so old that if I stand still for a moment I’ll petrify. I should probably watch the news again. I know I should phone back the funeral guy. As for sorting uni and my part-time job … Instead, I find myself back in Dad’s bedroom, staring at the framed photo of him and Mum, trying to make out what’s written on Dad’s T-shirt, dusting off the glass with my manky sleeve. I reckon Dad’s about eighteen in this. My age. He looks so young and carefree. So happy with Mum. Yet the man who raisedme and Mikey on his own looked grey and strained. I guess that’s understandable when you’re forced to go through years and years not knowing if your wife is dead. What a bitch .
I turn the photo frame over and open up the back to see if there’s a record of exactly when the picture was taken. As I do so, these tiny squares of newsprint flutter to the bed. Each is neatly trimmed, and all five notices are the same. Some random message in the personal column, dated on Dad’s birthday, for each of the last five years.
Happy birthday SMcC. Enduring love c/o Maungaroa General Store .
CHAPTER FIVE
OKAY, THESE NOTICES could come from anyone, right? Maybe Dad had a secret admirer. Or, bloody hell, perhaps he had a girlfriend and I didn’t know. That would be good: the poor bastard deserved a little snake-charming in his old age. So why do I immediately jump to the conclusion they’re from Mum? The idea that she materialised five years ago to send him creepy little messages is nothing short of sick.
If I think back five years to the date of the first message, I’d have been thirteen and Mikey nine. Thirteen … thirteen … It was the year I started secondary school. The year Dad was made the president of the CTU. He was all over the news and, if I remember rightly, launched straight into a big campaign to reinstate the minimum wage. Dad was gutted when he lost … or so I thought. Maybe he was gutted about something else.
I reconstruct the picture frame and take the notices through to his study, taping them to a clean sheet of paper so I can view them all at once. The longer I stare at them, the more convinced I am that they’re from Mum. Don’t ask me why: I’m buggered if I know. Not that it gives me any comfort. If there’s one thing I absolutely hate it’s people who play games to mind-fuck someone else. It’s a real politician’s trick. A game for scum.
I start to pore through Dad’s personal papers again, feeling like a spy. There’s a whole stack about Mikey, from when Dad was fighting with the school to keep him with his peers. He must have scoured the internet for days, there’s so much research to back up his bid. Perhaps one day I’ll show all this to Mikey and he’ll understand how hard Dad fought.
There’s a mass of letters from the school about me, too: disruptive, fighting, blah, blah, blah. They never understood the shit I went through protecting Mikey. Never asked me if I was hurt. I tried to keep as much of it as I could from Dad, who had enough on his plate. Besides, he might’ve shifted me somewhere else, and that really would have left poor Mikey up shit creek without a paddle — or a friend.
I find a pile of printed bank statements and sort them into months and years. It’s just as I expected: money in quickly converting into money out. I knew we lived close to the breadline,
Mikey punches air. ‘Yus!’
‘But just for now,’ she says. ‘If things get worse, I’m heading for the hills.’
‘You and me both.’ For the first time we smile at each other, before she goes all red and looks away. Good job. I’d hate for her to notice that I’m blushing too.
‘You want to come with me to pick up my things?’ she says to Mikey, and I have the feeling she’s asked him so I’ll get a break.
Mikey bolts straight to the door.
The flat is eerily quiet once they’re gone. I just wander from room to room, not knowing what to do. I feel ninety … no, two thousand — so old that if I stand still for a moment I’ll petrify. I should probably watch the news again. I know I should phone back the funeral guy. As for sorting uni and my part-time job … Instead, I find myself back in Dad’s bedroom, staring at the framed photo of him and Mum, trying to make out what’s written on Dad’s T-shirt, dusting off the glass with my manky sleeve. I reckon Dad’s about eighteen in this. My age. He looks so young and carefree. So happy with Mum. Yet the man who raisedme and Mikey on his own looked grey and strained. I guess that’s understandable when you’re forced to go through years and years not knowing if your wife is dead. What a bitch .
I turn the photo frame over and open up the back to see if there’s a record of exactly when the picture was taken. As I do so, these tiny squares of newsprint flutter to the bed. Each is neatly trimmed, and all five notices are the same. Some random message in the personal column, dated on Dad’s birthday, for each of the last five years.
Happy birthday SMcC. Enduring love c/o Maungaroa General Store .
CHAPTER FIVE
OKAY, THESE NOTICES could come from anyone, right? Maybe Dad had a secret admirer. Or, bloody hell, perhaps he had a girlfriend and I didn’t know. That would be good: the poor bastard deserved a little snake-charming in his old age. So why do I immediately jump to the conclusion they’re from Mum? The idea that she materialised five years ago to send him creepy little messages is nothing short of sick.
If I think back five years to the date of the first message, I’d have been thirteen and Mikey nine. Thirteen … thirteen … It was the year I started secondary school. The year Dad was made the president of the CTU. He was all over the news and, if I remember rightly, launched straight into a big campaign to reinstate the minimum wage. Dad was gutted when he lost … or so I thought. Maybe he was gutted about something else.
I reconstruct the picture frame and take the notices through to his study, taping them to a clean sheet of paper so I can view them all at once. The longer I stare at them, the more convinced I am that they’re from Mum. Don’t ask me why: I’m buggered if I know. Not that it gives me any comfort. If there’s one thing I absolutely hate it’s people who play games to mind-fuck someone else. It’s a real politician’s trick. A game for scum.
I start to pore through Dad’s personal papers again, feeling like a spy. There’s a whole stack about Mikey, from when Dad was fighting with the school to keep him with his peers. He must have scoured the internet for days, there’s so much research to back up his bid. Perhaps one day I’ll show all this to Mikey and he’ll understand how hard Dad fought.
There’s a mass of letters from the school about me, too: disruptive, fighting, blah, blah, blah. They never understood the shit I went through protecting Mikey. Never asked me if I was hurt. I tried to keep as much of it as I could from Dad, who had enough on his plate. Besides, he might’ve shifted me somewhere else, and that really would have left poor Mikey up shit creek without a paddle — or a friend.
I find a pile of printed bank statements and sort them into months and years. It’s just as I expected: money in quickly converting into money out. I knew we lived close to the breadline,
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