88 ELLE AUSTRALIA
ELLE
FICTION
bySueWoolfe
G
erard was a man who’d learned early to eke
things out.When he was a child, his mother had
comeunexpectedly to his primary school one
lunchtime and hugged him across the fence.
Gerard had tried not to turn and check which
children were looking. But that afternoon, when he let
himselfinto his house with the key under the dead azalea, he
found a note from his mother pinned by a knife to the
doorframe. He thought he could make out the word “gold”.
His father, coming home some hours later, said it merely read
“gone to get dinner”. However, neither dinner nor his
motherturned up and Gerard learned how to make the
memory of a hug last. His mother, on her eventual return,
¢ ĴǰĴ
were her only hope, but even they betrayed her, he could tell
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circles on dishes, the sink, once even in the cat’s plate. Family
dinners were so silent you could hear everyone swallowing.
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be companionable, but no-one noticed.
Then, when Gerard was 15, his father, a laboratory
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Gerard could see, was asked by the laboratory head one
rainyafternoon to be driven to the bus stop. Gerard’s
fatherwas a procrastinator and hadn’t emptied the station
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ǰ ¢ Ĵǯ
Thehead became suspicious and silent. The department
had been asking questions about the disappearance of¢ ǰ Ĵǯ head
gotout and before he put up his umbrella, he broke the
rulesof politeness and peered into the gloom of the station
wagon. Shortly afterwards, Gerard’s father lost his job.
Shortly after that, he left home, striding to the corner, his
pocket ringing with all the coins he saved. At the corner, he
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childhood, from the time when Gerard began counting,
which was when he was in kindergarten. So a wave seemed
to belie the threat of imminent abandonment and gave the
boy courage, and he jumped the gate (it was girlish to open
gates, and he didn’t want his father to loathe him for being
girlish) and he sped after his father.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Nowhere,” said his father. Over a silent dinner that night,
he asked his mother if his father had loved him.
“Who knows?” she said.Some years later, when his mother died, Gerard decided to
ę ǯBy this stage, he lived alone in a small and
grimysemi-detached house of cranky-looking red brick.
He’¢Ĵǰ
his father, he collected nothing. Making things endure had
become a lonely passion. After dinner, he didn’t just go to
bed as his mother and father had done; he’d think of
howto do some eking out. When he’d sneezed his way
through abox of tissues, he’d sort them and dry the most
innocent-looking ones with a hairdryer. He split toothpaste
ȱȱĴȱȱȱĚȱȱ ȱȱȱȱHER LAUGHTER
LIKE A SONG
OF FREEDOM