Take-Off
Content
TAKE-OFF
I switch the lamp on and fumble on the floor for my cigarettes. I don't feel tired, but I know I have to try and wedge a deep slice of sleep in somehow. I can hear bottles crashing outside the restaurant down the street. I’m sitting here in the halted sluice of night, a pearly stream of smoke passing over my face, thinking about Sophie and my brother.
***
I looked over at Ben’s driving face. There was gingery stubble around his deadpan mouth. The coral of suburbia poured over his sunglasses as we drove towards the shopping centre Megaplex. My little brother looked like an off duty cop, little brother, he was huge now. When he met me at the airport my feet skimmed the carpet he while he swung me round like a stick doll. “So you glad to be back?” The things about Adelaide that comforted him were the same things that compelled me to call it ‘a cowshed with a cappuccino machine.’ “Yeah.” A song came on the radio we both knew, and we sung along in stupid high voices. We both rushed to the chorus to insert our own rude version of the lyrics. The adding of obscenities to pop songs was one of our favourite games. He got there first. I was a bit out of practice. It was one of those quiet, dead bird blue sky Tuesdays. Ben stifled a yawn as we wandered across the Westfield car park towards the cinema. We still had about twenty minutes to kill so we drifted through the mall. Ben stopped to look at some
1
TAKE-OFF shirts on a sale rack. They weren’t my thing. but I could see him in one. “What do yu reckon?” “Yeah, can’t go wrong for twenty bucks.” He looked at his reflection in this big-mirrored post by the shop entrance, and he pursed his lips and made his eyes look all heavy lidded. We’d seen Bryan Ferry do it in this video once, and since then Ben always pulled his ‘Bryan face’ whenever we were around a mirror. I sat in the cinema foyer and watched Ben come back with some popcorn and a couple of cokes. He looked tired; he was always tired these days he reckoned. Ben’s eyes are like broken glass in blue milk. That’s how mum described them. They are now wrapped up in a big adult head that seemed to have just occurred of its own accord. It’s like a stranger had taken over his face in his teenage years, and I have trouble recognising the person I grew up with in all that transfigured flesh and bone. When we were kids I used to grab his head all the time to kiss him, it used to feel nice, my lips squishing into the warm velvet of his cheeks, it drove him insane. He wore aftershave now, aftershave and khaki casual clothes. Ben handed me a coke and sat down next to me. I commented on how horrible the carpets in new cinemas always are; big electric worms of colour splashed all over a bright nylon blue in this case. Ben agreed. “Yeah it looks like an Andrew Lloyd Webber robot threw up in here.” He was a little carrot top wasn't he? Ben was hunkered over next to me, popcorn going cold in his big cop hand. He was chewing his lip like he did in quiet moments. Bright ginger hair and freckles, like new copper wire, and toffee spattered, like a gold fish. Now he was all sort of sandy. Sandstone man I thought, quarried
2
TAKE-OFF and chiselled locally. He sat there, big cop body folded over, chewing the inside of his lip as his rostered day off ticked away.
Ben bought the family house after our parent’s divorce. Our old room was now a messy stockpile of redundant household machines. We’d bunked up in there for years, his Smurf posters next to my New Romantic idols. The top shelf of the cupboard used to be my nerve centre; I used to have to stand on tiptoes to reach into the carefully arranged layers of treasure. When I looked at that space again I wondered how I managed to fit so much stuff up there. As Ben got bigger the territory of the top shelf became complicated. Ever shifting borders of shared and sacred ground came into being, and I incorporated secret crannies. For my penknives, and my crystals, and the blotchy paged Last Exit to Brooklyn I’d stolen from my uncle’s bookshelf. Ben’s treasure for the main part consisted of rocks and sticks and buttons, he kept his favourites under the covers with him, and mum would freak, she had this idea you could swallow stuff in your sleep. I reached up the back and pulled out the old tape recorder. Mum bought it when she was learning shorthand, but Ben and I soon requisitioned it. We’d make up these stupid songs and record them. We had one we called The Bath Song for some reason, it had a sort of Coconut Club feel to it. I’d croon: One night my brother and me/ we in Hawaii / in the evening and Ben would go eeeevvning in the background.
After the movie we went to a new restaurant I was keen to check out. Ben didn't
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TAKE-OFF care: he'd eat anything. We sat outside so I could smoke. Ben apologised again for yawning. When my duck risotto arrived I was telling Ben about Sophie. On our first date Sophie walked bare foot down Swanston Street. I told him that I told her my brother was a cop and that she’d got all excited. Ben smiled tiredly. He'd had a date himself recently. "So how’d it go?" I was hungry for more information. Ben leant back, looking cautiously at his prawn pasta. "Yeah alright." I fished for more, but lost interest in the tiddlers he threw my way. "Are you sure you're not gay Ben?" I had long harboured the fantasy that he was, because that would be fun, to have a gay cop brother. Ben poked at his pasta. “Yeah,” he said, he was sure he wasn’t. "What duya reckon this is?" he held up a dark strand on his fork. "Caramelised onion." When the bill came Ben paid. Ben always paid.
I wandered into the living room to see my brother’s broad shoulders at the dining table. He was painting a wooden mask. I had suggested an art store and gone with him to buy the paint. I suggested he ask the girl working there for some advice, but Ben didn't like the idea, he preferred just to look around. His big hands touched tubes and tested brushes, his face quiet, conscious of being in this different environment. "What duya reckon?" He asked, holding up a handful of soft plastic paint tubes.
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TAKE-OFF "Yeah." Ben was going to paint the mask purple, except for the lips, which he was going to paint black. He was going to hang it on the wall in his room, our parent’s old room. He chewed his lip. "What time’s your flight?" His eyes were glued to the oily brush head licking the wood. “Aw we gotta while yet, hey Ben, does it weird you out?” “What?” “Sleeping in mum and dad’s room.” “What? Like it’s cursed?” A smile curled into his concentration. “I don’t know just—“ “ Ah the continental drift under the continental quilt,” he said in a mock Shakespearian tone, then laughed, “ No mate, I’ve never really thought about it.” I started singing The Bath Song. The second verse is: We sing and we dance/ and we speak of romance/ in the evening. Ben smiled and crooned his part.
We hugged at the airport and I kissed Ben’s cheek. There was no squelch, no warm puppies belly, just a man's shaven face. Ben slipped a fifty into my hand and looked away when my eyes had said thanks for too long. "See you next time your in town," he said, and waved from the terminal entrance, chewing his lip and looking for his car. It’s the surge I like. The rush of hitherto untapped energy as the plane readies to leave the ground, and then in that vital moment lifted helpless like a moth in great swooping, spilling cups of power.
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TAKE-OFF The plane followed the setting sun interstate, a blood red band between the flat clouds and the early stars. It kicked up a memory of when we were kids living up north. Ben was playing in the dirt at the end of the driveway. He’d pulled his nappy down and he was mixing up a little puddle of his urine with a stick. He was staring at me, entreating me to step closer and become involved. I loved what my little brother had done. Our mother would see this any moment now. She would shriek and scare the birds. And it would be my job to collect Ben inside, away from his puddle. The sun was low and I was looking at Ben beg me to help him mix his piss with a stick.
***
The alarm prises me from the ocean floor. At work I feel sick with fatigue, the only remnant of it as the rest of me whirrs on the small electric motors of a caffeine jag. I don’t mind though, I’m used to quivering like a Chihuahua. I’m back in Melbourne and I’m thinking about Sophie. Other thoughts raced around her as the day waddled by. I’ll ring her tonight. Should I ring her now? No, ring her tonight. She’d said to ring, Ring me when you get back, yes, I can hear her saying it. Well I'm back now aren't I? I laughed out loud, amazed. I’d ring her tonight, unless Bill left the office of course, and then I could ring her now. No. Tonight. Better. And then a pin drops onto a clean white sheet stretched to the earth’s curve.
Ben hadn't said much — he'd said fuck all—Sitting there chewing his lip.
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TAKE-OFF "Yeah this girl was from Melbourne," he'd said that. "She was a bit of a hippy," he'd said that as well, his soft blue gaze across the street. "I took her to the movies, like I alway's do." He’d sat back with his arms crossed, "and we went to that pub you told me about." His food arrived and he looked at it like he was looking into a bucket of aliens. "She was only here for a bit of a holiday."
I’m staring out the office window. There's a screwed up bit of paper that's blown into the car park. It looks like a hot dog wrapper; a red and green striped hot dog wrapper car crashed against a little island of weeds. Sophie loved cops. I love cops, I’d heard her say it. "Oh really, my brother's a police officer." "Get outta here!" "No seriously, he is." She went into the bathroom drying her hair, her lips cold and clean. “I'm going to be in your old neck of the woods for a few days," she said, "I'm staying with a friend of mine." I thought nothing of it, why would I? She came out of the bathroom smelling like vanilla. I can see her dress is draped over the couch. She looks windswept and refreshed. "Hey I saw that film you wanted to see!" she proudly reports. "And I went to that pub you said you liked."
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TAKE-OFF She prances as she speaks, her bare rain dance legs eventually settling under her on the couch. "Yeah it sort of turned into a bit of a holiday I guess."
It is a thing of tin. A shack that keeps out neither wind or rain. Inside is a table, warped and tinder light. Rags weathered into webs hang limp over the glassless windows. I have travelled through the dry land, as the sun assaulted and abandoned the parched low hills that beg outside the city. I’ve heard stories, but I’ve never believed them. I approach the place and steel myself to discover skeletons inside. But they are very much alive. Ben jokes as I enter that I shouldn't have taken so long fucking the sheep along the way. Sophie, sitting at the table, glows. "We got you a present", Ben says, looking around, “This place, it’s all yours.”
8
TAKE-OFF
9
I switch the lamp on and fumble on the floor for my cigarettes. I don't feel tired, but I know I have to try and wedge a deep slice of sleep in somehow. I can hear bottles crashing outside the restaurant down the street. I’m sitting here in the halted sluice of night, a pearly stream of smoke passing over my face, thinking about Sophie and my brother.
***
I looked over at Ben’s driving face. There was gingery stubble around his deadpan mouth. The coral of suburbia poured over his sunglasses as we drove towards the shopping centre Megaplex. My little brother looked like an off duty cop, little brother, he was huge now. When he met me at the airport my feet skimmed the carpet he while he swung me round like a stick doll. “So you glad to be back?” The things about Adelaide that comforted him were the same things that compelled me to call it ‘a cowshed with a cappuccino machine.’ “Yeah.” A song came on the radio we both knew, and we sung along in stupid high voices. We both rushed to the chorus to insert our own rude version of the lyrics. The adding of obscenities to pop songs was one of our favourite games. He got there first. I was a bit out of practice. It was one of those quiet, dead bird blue sky Tuesdays. Ben stifled a yawn as we wandered across the Westfield car park towards the cinema. We still had about twenty minutes to kill so we drifted through the mall. Ben stopped to look at some
1
TAKE-OFF shirts on a sale rack. They weren’t my thing. but I could see him in one. “What do yu reckon?” “Yeah, can’t go wrong for twenty bucks.” He looked at his reflection in this big-mirrored post by the shop entrance, and he pursed his lips and made his eyes look all heavy lidded. We’d seen Bryan Ferry do it in this video once, and since then Ben always pulled his ‘Bryan face’ whenever we were around a mirror. I sat in the cinema foyer and watched Ben come back with some popcorn and a couple of cokes. He looked tired; he was always tired these days he reckoned. Ben’s eyes are like broken glass in blue milk. That’s how mum described them. They are now wrapped up in a big adult head that seemed to have just occurred of its own accord. It’s like a stranger had taken over his face in his teenage years, and I have trouble recognising the person I grew up with in all that transfigured flesh and bone. When we were kids I used to grab his head all the time to kiss him, it used to feel nice, my lips squishing into the warm velvet of his cheeks, it drove him insane. He wore aftershave now, aftershave and khaki casual clothes. Ben handed me a coke and sat down next to me. I commented on how horrible the carpets in new cinemas always are; big electric worms of colour splashed all over a bright nylon blue in this case. Ben agreed. “Yeah it looks like an Andrew Lloyd Webber robot threw up in here.” He was a little carrot top wasn't he? Ben was hunkered over next to me, popcorn going cold in his big cop hand. He was chewing his lip like he did in quiet moments. Bright ginger hair and freckles, like new copper wire, and toffee spattered, like a gold fish. Now he was all sort of sandy. Sandstone man I thought, quarried
2
TAKE-OFF and chiselled locally. He sat there, big cop body folded over, chewing the inside of his lip as his rostered day off ticked away.
Ben bought the family house after our parent’s divorce. Our old room was now a messy stockpile of redundant household machines. We’d bunked up in there for years, his Smurf posters next to my New Romantic idols. The top shelf of the cupboard used to be my nerve centre; I used to have to stand on tiptoes to reach into the carefully arranged layers of treasure. When I looked at that space again I wondered how I managed to fit so much stuff up there. As Ben got bigger the territory of the top shelf became complicated. Ever shifting borders of shared and sacred ground came into being, and I incorporated secret crannies. For my penknives, and my crystals, and the blotchy paged Last Exit to Brooklyn I’d stolen from my uncle’s bookshelf. Ben’s treasure for the main part consisted of rocks and sticks and buttons, he kept his favourites under the covers with him, and mum would freak, she had this idea you could swallow stuff in your sleep. I reached up the back and pulled out the old tape recorder. Mum bought it when she was learning shorthand, but Ben and I soon requisitioned it. We’d make up these stupid songs and record them. We had one we called The Bath Song for some reason, it had a sort of Coconut Club feel to it. I’d croon: One night my brother and me/ we in Hawaii / in the evening and Ben would go eeeevvning in the background.
After the movie we went to a new restaurant I was keen to check out. Ben didn't
3
TAKE-OFF care: he'd eat anything. We sat outside so I could smoke. Ben apologised again for yawning. When my duck risotto arrived I was telling Ben about Sophie. On our first date Sophie walked bare foot down Swanston Street. I told him that I told her my brother was a cop and that she’d got all excited. Ben smiled tiredly. He'd had a date himself recently. "So how’d it go?" I was hungry for more information. Ben leant back, looking cautiously at his prawn pasta. "Yeah alright." I fished for more, but lost interest in the tiddlers he threw my way. "Are you sure you're not gay Ben?" I had long harboured the fantasy that he was, because that would be fun, to have a gay cop brother. Ben poked at his pasta. “Yeah,” he said, he was sure he wasn’t. "What duya reckon this is?" he held up a dark strand on his fork. "Caramelised onion." When the bill came Ben paid. Ben always paid.
I wandered into the living room to see my brother’s broad shoulders at the dining table. He was painting a wooden mask. I had suggested an art store and gone with him to buy the paint. I suggested he ask the girl working there for some advice, but Ben didn't like the idea, he preferred just to look around. His big hands touched tubes and tested brushes, his face quiet, conscious of being in this different environment. "What duya reckon?" He asked, holding up a handful of soft plastic paint tubes.
4
TAKE-OFF "Yeah." Ben was going to paint the mask purple, except for the lips, which he was going to paint black. He was going to hang it on the wall in his room, our parent’s old room. He chewed his lip. "What time’s your flight?" His eyes were glued to the oily brush head licking the wood. “Aw we gotta while yet, hey Ben, does it weird you out?” “What?” “Sleeping in mum and dad’s room.” “What? Like it’s cursed?” A smile curled into his concentration. “I don’t know just—“ “ Ah the continental drift under the continental quilt,” he said in a mock Shakespearian tone, then laughed, “ No mate, I’ve never really thought about it.” I started singing The Bath Song. The second verse is: We sing and we dance/ and we speak of romance/ in the evening. Ben smiled and crooned his part.
We hugged at the airport and I kissed Ben’s cheek. There was no squelch, no warm puppies belly, just a man's shaven face. Ben slipped a fifty into my hand and looked away when my eyes had said thanks for too long. "See you next time your in town," he said, and waved from the terminal entrance, chewing his lip and looking for his car. It’s the surge I like. The rush of hitherto untapped energy as the plane readies to leave the ground, and then in that vital moment lifted helpless like a moth in great swooping, spilling cups of power.
5
TAKE-OFF The plane followed the setting sun interstate, a blood red band between the flat clouds and the early stars. It kicked up a memory of when we were kids living up north. Ben was playing in the dirt at the end of the driveway. He’d pulled his nappy down and he was mixing up a little puddle of his urine with a stick. He was staring at me, entreating me to step closer and become involved. I loved what my little brother had done. Our mother would see this any moment now. She would shriek and scare the birds. And it would be my job to collect Ben inside, away from his puddle. The sun was low and I was looking at Ben beg me to help him mix his piss with a stick.
***
The alarm prises me from the ocean floor. At work I feel sick with fatigue, the only remnant of it as the rest of me whirrs on the small electric motors of a caffeine jag. I don’t mind though, I’m used to quivering like a Chihuahua. I’m back in Melbourne and I’m thinking about Sophie. Other thoughts raced around her as the day waddled by. I’ll ring her tonight. Should I ring her now? No, ring her tonight. She’d said to ring, Ring me when you get back, yes, I can hear her saying it. Well I'm back now aren't I? I laughed out loud, amazed. I’d ring her tonight, unless Bill left the office of course, and then I could ring her now. No. Tonight. Better. And then a pin drops onto a clean white sheet stretched to the earth’s curve.
Ben hadn't said much — he'd said fuck all—Sitting there chewing his lip.
6
TAKE-OFF "Yeah this girl was from Melbourne," he'd said that. "She was a bit of a hippy," he'd said that as well, his soft blue gaze across the street. "I took her to the movies, like I alway's do." He’d sat back with his arms crossed, "and we went to that pub you told me about." His food arrived and he looked at it like he was looking into a bucket of aliens. "She was only here for a bit of a holiday."
I’m staring out the office window. There's a screwed up bit of paper that's blown into the car park. It looks like a hot dog wrapper; a red and green striped hot dog wrapper car crashed against a little island of weeds. Sophie loved cops. I love cops, I’d heard her say it. "Oh really, my brother's a police officer." "Get outta here!" "No seriously, he is." She went into the bathroom drying her hair, her lips cold and clean. “I'm going to be in your old neck of the woods for a few days," she said, "I'm staying with a friend of mine." I thought nothing of it, why would I? She came out of the bathroom smelling like vanilla. I can see her dress is draped over the couch. She looks windswept and refreshed. "Hey I saw that film you wanted to see!" she proudly reports. "And I went to that pub you said you liked."
7
TAKE-OFF She prances as she speaks, her bare rain dance legs eventually settling under her on the couch. "Yeah it sort of turned into a bit of a holiday I guess."
It is a thing of tin. A shack that keeps out neither wind or rain. Inside is a table, warped and tinder light. Rags weathered into webs hang limp over the glassless windows. I have travelled through the dry land, as the sun assaulted and abandoned the parched low hills that beg outside the city. I’ve heard stories, but I’ve never believed them. I approach the place and steel myself to discover skeletons inside. But they are very much alive. Ben jokes as I enter that I shouldn't have taken so long fucking the sheep along the way. Sophie, sitting at the table, glows. "We got you a present", Ben says, looking around, “This place, it’s all yours.”
8
TAKE-OFF
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