Page 97 of Power Moves
I park on the driveway, next to a red Corolla I don’t recognise. Everything else is as I remember: the blond-brick facade, the olive-green door, the neat sash windows under the grey-tiled roof. The flower beds are dotted with weeds and bluebells, and the lawn is a patchwork of greens. It’s the house I drew in preschool, with five stick figures out the front: Mum, Dad, Jessie, Maxy and me.
Across the road, a pigeon roosts on the tennis-court fence as flashes of yellow slice across the nets. A coach stands by the ball machine, barking instructions. The sprawling scribbly gums tower along the road, their gnarled roots cracking the pavement, their branches hugging the sky. The light out here in the western suburbs is starker, the air less humid. I feel lightyears away from reality—or maybe I’m back in it.
My feet move automatically, across the pebbled concrete where we used to draw hopscotches, and over the crack thatfills with ants after thunderstorms. I skip the bottom step—as I always have—and arrive at the front door.
My plan is simple. Apologise to Jessie, help Dad make the potato salad, eat dinner, be normal, bepresent, and after I do all that I’ll get back in the car and start planning this event with the Prime Minister. Siri can help me express-order some new trousers.
The doorbell is the same cascading scale of notes I remember from childhood. There are muffled sounds from the kitchen and Dad’s distant voice floats through the door: ‘If it’s the preachy mob, tell them no thanks.’
I hear a ‘bags not’, followed by a groan, followed by an irritated chorus of ‘scissors, paper, rock’, then another groan. Seconds later, a disgruntled Jessie and an upbeat Maxy open the door. On the right-hand side of the hallway, the door to the living room is still firmly sealed, as it has been for six years.
‘Mill.’ Jessie’s eyes widen. ‘We didn’t expect you.’
My heart twinges at the ‘we’, like everyone else in my family is in a gang I’m not part of. I try to smile through it. ‘My plans changed,’ I say. Then, rephrasing: ‘I changed my plans. Jess, I’m so sorry. I’m a stupid idiot and—’
Jessie’s gaze snaps to Maxy. ‘What should we do?’ she hisses.
‘Who is it?’ Dad calls.
‘Ahh!’ Maxy’s eyes frantically dart down the hallway.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask. If there were already seeds of anxiety in my gut, they’re now germinating into poison ivy and coiling around my spleen. ‘Guys, what’s going—’
I don’t get to finish my question because Maxy is suddenly grabbing the rusted-shut handle of the living-room door—the one that’s been shut for six years.
‘Yes!’ Jessie encourages him.
My eyes widen in confusion, then terror, as Maxy wrenches the door open and together, they pull me inside.
?
‘What the hell, guys?!’
The blinds are drawn and only a narrow rectangle of light peeps through, illuminating the specks of dust floating in the air. We haven’t been in this room since the palliative-care bed was wheeled out before the funeral. It feels like a museum: musty, stale, the humidity dialled to preservation-mode.
I’m torn between an instinctive desire to run straight out and a self-destructive compulsion to absorb every tiny detail. The film of dust on the bookshelf, the framed photographs that line the walls, the tartan-print wingback chairs, the water stains on the coffee table that look like Olympic rings that have drifted apart.
Eventually, my instinct for self-preservation kicks in. ‘Guys! We hate this room! Why are we in here? We hate this coffee table!’ I blindly kick at one of its wooden legs as though I can propel it out of my consciousness and not have to remember the pill bottles and the spit towel and the half-eaten jars of baby food. But the table only squeaks awkwardly against the floorboards, barely moving.
Jessie’s face is anguished. ‘We’re sorry, but we need to warn you. You’re probably going to be thinking about Mum today. A lot. Directly or indirectly.’
‘What do you mean?!’
‘Mill, we know you play weird mind games with yourself to pretend like Mum never died, but …’
‘We’ve all got to move forward,’ says Maxy gently.
There’s a quiet knock on the door.
‘Kids, are you in there?’ calls Dad. ‘Seems strange that you would be in there, but just wanted to check because Alex is setting the table on the deck and was wondering if you wanted a wine?’
‘Alex?’ I mouth to them. ‘From the men’s shed? The woodwork facilitator? He’s here?’
‘Yes and no,’ says Maxy quietly.
‘What do you mean?’
Jessie grimaces. ‘Yes, Alex is here, but Alex isn’t a he.’ She looks at me square-on and places her hands on my shoulders to make sure I’m understanding the full meaning of her words. ‘Mill, Alex is a she.’
