Promises

Promises

Tommy Cotton

Shooting Star

Shooting Star Press

First published in Australia in 2019

by Shooting Star Press

PO Box 6813, Charnwood ACT 2615

info@shootingstar.pub

www.shootingstar.pub

ABN 63 158 506 524

This work copyright © Tommy Cotton 2019

The right of Tommy Cotton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000. All rights reserved.

Other than brief extracts, no part of this publication may be produced in any form without the written consent of the Publisher. The Publisher makes no representation or warranty regarding the accuracy, timeliness, suitability or any other aspect of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

COTTON, Tommy.

Promises

ISBN: 978-1-925821-27-7 print

ISBN: 978-1-925821-28-4 ebook

Typesetting by Debbie Phillips, DP Plus

Contents

Prologue - Eurabbie

Chapter 1 - Girls, Bums, and Dates

Chapter 2 - Carrie Underwood

Chapter 3 - Sweetness and Creeps

Chapter 4 - Lennon

Chapter 5 - Gas Brigades

Chapter 6 - Family Feud

Chapter 7 - Reunions

Chapter 8 - Telly

Chapter 9 - JJ and Boobs

Chapter 10 - Anniversaries

Chapter 11 - New Friends

Chapter 12 - Big Me

Chapter 13 - Rubbish

Chapter 14 - Not Catching Flies

Chapter 15 - The Gawker

Chapter 16 - Judy

Chapter 17 - Sweet Lies

Chapter 18 - Old Mate

Chapter 19 - Deeper Water

Chapter 20 - Ten Fifty-Eight

Chapter 21 - Not Just Words

Epilogue - The Middle

I wish to acknowledge the Traditional Owners

of the land on which I wrote and edited this book.

I pay my respects to their Elders, past, present,

and emerging.

For Nick.

Prologue

Eurabbie

I was watching television when Mum came into the living room.

She placed a packet of Teddy Bear biscuits and glass of milk down on the coffee table. Then she sat beside me and took my hands. ‘Darling …’

I’ve never been able to remember anything she said between her first word and:

‘Cancer.’

She hugged me, my body stiff, and ran her fingers through my hair. ‘Please don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I promise I’ll beat this.’

She let me go. I looked her in the eyes: fragile, unsure, vulnerable. Not Mum.

Later that night I couldn’t sleep. Disconcerting thoughts and frightening contingencies buffeted my brain.

You’ll be alone.

You’ll always be alone.

Holes in her organs.

Tumours. Tumours. Tumours.

She’s going to die, you know.

You’ll be alone.

Sometime after midnight, I couldn’t stand it any longer and needed fresh air.

The house was hauntingly quiet, everyone fast asleep.

I sneaked out the back door. Mum’s gardens were silhouettes, the surrounding bush haunting. I felt as though I was the only person on Earth alive.

Poignant thoughts persisted, causing calamity in my mind.

This wasn’t happening—first Kaylee, now Mum. Enough!

I began to pace, trying to catch my body up to my mind, trying to quieten the thoughts. Then I ran.

I ran until all I could hear was my breathing, gasping in air as if I was on top of a mountain. In the icy coldness of winter, warm feverish sweat streamed down my forehead.

I went to jump the back fence into a vacant lot of bushland behind our property but caught my canvas shoe on the top run of wire and landed face first on dried eucalyptus leaves. A possum barked from somewhere in the bush.

For a moment I paused and caught my breath.

On my hands and knees, I crawled over to the blue gum.

It seemed like someone had carved the trunk into a seat. It wasn’t the Faraway Tree in the books Mum used to read, but it was enchanting to me. The blue gum had been a refuge for me and my best friend, Kaylee. She was always a much better climber than me. She could scale the trunk like a koala and then crawl across a big branch that extended far more horizontally than others. She’d sit there, legs dangling, blonde hair flowing freely over her face, and giggle at me stuck on the ground. The blue gum was our escape. It was where I’d promised her that things would turn out okay, where we’d made a pact to fly together …

I leaned into the groove of the tree trunk, bark cool on my back, and collected myself.

Mum was sick. The outcome was uncertain. All I could do was be a good son, do the right thing by her in whatever situation. But what the hell could I do?

Bright white moonlight shone through the branches of the blue gum; the type of light that made me think that wherever the sun was shining must be warm.

Somewhere, sometime, there was a chance for things to turn out okay, for those happy endings that they show in the movies.

I reached into my pockets and felt around. There were three things I always carried with me back then: a lock pick, pocketknife, and the ashes.

I took out the knife and flicked open the blade. I knew what I had to do.

I made a promise …

My muscles pulsed with adrenalin. I pressed the blade onto the inside of my forearm and dragged, my skin opening the way Mum’s purse unzipped when she gave me a coin at the two-dollar shop. A teardrop of blood ran from the wound and then became a small stream. The pain subsided as tiny red rivers flowed over my skin, warm and relieving. Then I tipped the ashes onto the wound and rubbed them in. It stung. I wished it stung more. The blood dried on my forearm and clotted at the wound until it sealed.

I relaxed my head back against the tree trunk. Despite everything that had fogged my mind, some things were now clear.

Things would turn out okay, there’d be a happy ending.

I knew I could keep my promise.

Chapter 1

Girls, Bums, and Dates

Scenes change outside the car window.

Mum glances to me in the rear-view mirror. Her hazel eyes are warm and gentle, but strong and resolute. She beat cancer and has been in remission for over four years. Another seven months and they might say she’s cured. She kept her promise.

‘I didn’t go in your room,’ my little sister, Bronte, says from the front passenger seat. ‘I ate all your Nutri-Grain but.’

This makes me smile. Maybe it would piss me off any other time, but I guess I’m glad to be going home. From now on, I’ll have regular outpatient appointments with a new caseworker, a psychologist named Jacinta, who thinks I need to talk more about Kaylee. Mum will be there for some, which makes me nervous.

‘It’s okay,’ I reply to Bronte. ‘I’ll just eat your Coco Pops.’

She throws me the bird.

‘Place was quiet without you,’ Mum says.

‘Was nice,’ adds Bronte.

She’s in Year Ten, two years my junior, and every bit the antsy teenager. Her auburn hair and milky skin, which burns in any season except winter, are a stark contrast to the Mediterranean complexion and dark hair I got from Mum.

Our family history is half-unknown and half-convoluted.

Mum’s birth parents arrived here by boat in the sixties from some area of land that is Macedonia or Greece, depending on which café in the north you’re at. They had her young and unwed and orphaned her shortly after she was born. Another couple, who became the grandparents I’ve heard of in stories, adopted her. Pop was a Sicilian bricklayer, whose family emigrated from Italy to Australia post-WWII. Nan was a nurse and grew up in suburbia, the only child in a middle-class family. She was part of the Stolen Generation, which she discovered when Mum was a teenager. They both died before I was born, and Mum hasn’t ever reunited with her biological parents. In her words, ‘After birth, all they did for me was give me a name.’ Her maiden name was Janevski, which she changed to Cowen when she married my dad.

Looking at Bronte’s face in the side mirror, I wonder if she occasionally wonders, like I do, about the man whose name we bear, and from whose side of the family she probably inherited her appearance.

Dad died during combat in Afghanistan when I was young. Mum said he didn’t like photos and the few she had of him she lost in a spring clean some years before, so all I know about him are from Mum’s stories and scattered, indistinct memories, countable on one hand. His name, Daniel Cowen, and just a knowledge of his presence at one time. Mum and Dad were never close to his family, and so, like him, they don’t exist in my life.

Mum and Bronte continue to chat, but their conversation becomes muffled to me.

We drive north through the park, oaks on either side of the road, tram tracks in the middle. Victorian townhouses flash by. The ding of the 19 sounds as we near the fountain. Like always, I long for Mum to turn right here.

I want her to go east along Alexandra Parade. Just an hour on the Eastern, through the outer suburbs, and then we’ll be out of the city. Onto the highway, hugged by mountains, where houses are sporadic, and paddocks roll into the distance, where the valley deepens as white lines flash past. To those winding roads, which I’d walk as a child with the perpetual feeling of discovery inside me. To where the Yarra runs like a road itself; the current I’d tube down with Kaylee on summer days; and banks from where I’d skim stones across the river’s shimmering surface … Take me all the way to that property I still love so much. To the sound of crickets and cicada, the coo of magpies and currawongs, squawks and laughter from cockatoos and kookaburras, willie wagtails singing with daybreak. To the wind through the trees, leaves scudding with gusts and dancing in swirls, dried gum leaves crunching underfoot in spells of drought. The soundtrack of a bushland childhood, time on the clock never close. To the scents: fresh river air, ozone and petrichor accompanying summer storms, and omnipresent eucalypt, intoxicating and sweet. To where we could attach our minds to wings and fly …

‘Paddy?’

Take me back.

To where I have another chance at being who I might have been, before I make those promises and become the person who failed her, to when I still have a chance at getting these years right. To when I could have done something to stop it …

‘Paddy?’ Mum’s voice breaks me from my reverie. She’s opened my door and is waiting. ‘We’re home. Everything okay?’

‘Yep, sorry.’ I hurry from the car. ‘Just daydreaming.’

She scans me with a look of consternation.

‘Christina, I’m great.’ It’s a playful, smart-arse habit of mine to call her by her name, rather than Mum. ‘Just imagining all the great things that are gonna happen this year.’

‘Good,’ she says, eyeing me for an instant more—she does a lot of talking with her eyes. ‘And you know I don’t like being called that.’

‘My apologies, Chrissy.’

She scolds me with a look, momentarily, but breaks into a giggle. ‘I’ve missed you, honey.’

‘I’ve missed you too.’

Mum pulls my head down and plants a kiss on my forehead, then she wraps her arms around me, my face buried into her shoulder.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m smothering you.’

‘Don’t beat yourself up.’ I keep her close. ‘Smothering is only one letter different from mothering.’

She holds my face in her hands. ‘Promise me you’re okay, baby.’

I nod. ‘Promise.’

I will be. Life begins after high school, doesn’t it? There’s a whole world out there beyond those classrooms, uniforms, and gates. That’s what my elder sister, Amelia, tells me. She’s travelling it, blogging. One day I’ll see it. I just need to make it through this year.

I collect my bags from the boot then make the five-step journey to the front door and head inside. Home, this dusty old rental, a long, three-bedroom terrace house off Sydney Road.

We’ve been here for about five years. Although Mum said we moved to be closer for her treatment, I know it was just as much about trying to give me a fresh start, and ultimately, because of money.

In my room, I dump my bags and collapse face-first into my pillow. After a month on the firm mattresses of the psych ward, my bed feels like a cloud.

I spend the next day relaxing, catching up on The Walking Dead, and getting my books ready for Monday, the start of Year Twelve.

Deng sends me a message late in the arvo. With a deodorant shower, fresh undies, and hair tied in a man bun, I’m on my way out the door.

‘Just out for a souva with Deng,’ I respond to Mum when she asks where I’m going. ‘Might go for a drive too.’

She questions me briefly, the usual stuff after my head’s gotten me locked up, but I assure her it’s just a bit of meat, pita, and garlic sauce. I don’t like lying to her, but after almost an entire summer holidays spent in the confines of the ward with constant supervision, I need to get out.

The sun is setting in pastel oranges and pinks as I turn onto Sydney Road.

I pass Savers and approach the picket fences of The Penny Black, the front tables full. The combination of solid, woggish stubble, about one-ninety centimetres of height, some half-legit stick and poke tattoos up my arms and a fake ID have been getting me into most bars and pubs around town for about six months now. As far as Melbourne’s bouncers know, my name is Giannis ‘John’ Papoulis, I’m nineteen, and I can only drive automatic motor vehicles.

A couple of people in line go through and then Steve at the door nods to me. ‘G’day John. Ya boy’s already inside.’

On the eve of our national holiday, the place is jampacked with revellers. The main room is dark, like always. Newspaper articles and band posters cover almost every centimetre of wall space, while stage lighting fixtures hang from the high, black ceiling. I pass the sticky woodgrain bar and the beer-stained pool table and head outside.

On the deck, some wavy-haired, bearded hipsters sit around the retro gaming machine near the back door, empty and half-full glasses scattered over the screen. Rainbow string lights are flashing, bright against the pale embers of dusk. I survey the beer garden—more hipsters, tradies, and the general riffraff of the north—and spot Deng in the back corner. He’s got an entire booth reserved, shooing people away like mozzies. Down the stairs and over the fake grass, I squeeze through bodies, catching a few brews on my sleeve.

‘Mate!’ Deng’s accent always makes me smile. ‘Free at last.’

He stands and opens his arms. I pull his head down and kiss his bald scalp.

He wipes his head, grinning. ‘A month away and they still not fix your weird.’

‘They treat my crazy, man, not my weird.’

‘I’ll get the drinks, weirdo.’ He slaps my back and wanders off to the outside bar.

Deng’s my only friend. We met one night about a year ago when he stopped his taxi on the side of the road. He picked my drunk arse up and took me home with no charge. The next time we met, we drank together and later stumbled into one of his friend’s cabs. He’s a Lost Boy, as a child forced to fight in the Sudanese Civil War after militia murdered his parents. He fled across the border to Ethiopia when he was twelve, and then bounced around Europe for a couple of years before getting his refugee visa here.

I move outside of myself and look in on me, waiting for Deng. So unlikely that those two people would ever know each other, but in this world, in this time, they do, and they’re friends. So unlikely, that the man by the bar would make it from war, and so unlikely, once thought, that the boy in the booth would ever have a friend again …

Deng works through the sardined beer garden, holding the drinks like he’s on a tightrope.

He places the pots of Brunswick Bitter down and slides into the booth. ‘Good to have you back.’

‘You talking to me or the drink?’

‘Both.’ He grins, raising his glass.

I raise mine and we clink them together—cheers.

‘So, I’ve got some news,’ Deng says. ‘Wanted to wait till you were out to tell ya—it came through.’

‘What?’

‘My citizenship. You’re looking at the newest true-blue Aussie.’

‘Holy shit!’ I lunge forward and pull him in for a hug over the table, almost spilling the drinks. ‘Congratulations, man.’

‘It’s short notice, but the ceremony’s tomorrow in the city.’

‘I’ll be there.’ I’m astonished and overjoyed. ‘Honestly, don’t know what to say.’

‘Say nothing, mate.’ He holds his glass up again. ‘Just drink.’

One more ‘Cheers,’ and then drink we do. Australia Day Eve. Deng, tomorrow officially an Australian, me, today at least, not quite crazy.

A few rounds disappear before Deng gets up to pee, and soon after I lose half the booth to a couple of flannel-clad, moustached hipsters.

The artificial lights are on, the sun clinging to the sky with fingers of orange and burnt amber. My eyes wander around the place. It’s an op shop party, and I’m curious about how long each person in the crowd scoured the shelves of Vinnies or Savers for their outfit. It’s ironic, but it all seems conformist, all the same in some way. But then something anomalous captures my attention.

There’s a vacuum on, and it’s sucking everything in—the hipsters, wooden chairs, bar, tradies, posters, decking, glasses …

Everything except that girl.

Her happy-sad Asiatic eyes make me want to know what she’s thinking; what story lies behind them. Mascara, which makes her lashes prominent, and jet-black eyeliner contrast perfectly against her lilac hair. When she catches me gawking, the vivid green of her eyes hits me, and my heart tries to burst from my chest.

She smiles a smile that traps me, pleasantly.

I should get up and talk to her, but my head is spinning, tipsy and confused and nervous and perhaps I needed another day or two in the ward.

The thought has occurred though, and I can’t ignore it, so now there are only three outcomes: I don’t talk to her and regret not doing so, or I talk to her and stuff it up and regret stuffing up, or I pull it off for once.

Deng returns, bustling past the hipsters. ‘Who’s got ya eye, ay Paddy?’

I’m still staring and have reached that length of time that is well and truly in the territory of creepy stalker. ‘No one.’

Deng’s forgotten to do up his fly. Do I tell him, or wait until he goes to talk to a girl, at which point it will be hilarious to see their eyes dart to his crotch and snigger at him?

‘Where is she?’ he asks.

‘Over there.’

‘Coloured hair?’

‘Yeah …’

‘She’s cute.’

‘Your fly’s undone.’

‘Huh?’

He does it up—I’m not a complete dick.

Night has set in now. Body by body the beer garden fills somewhere past capacity. The music turns from relaxed to upbeat, the atmosphere convivial.

We finish our drinks. Deng gets up to get another round. While he’s gone, I listen to the hipsters beside me debate whether Whitlam or Hawke is the best PM ever. I momentarily think about mentioning Abbott to stir them up, but I refrain from doing so. I don’t need to get in another bar fight so soon …

Deng slides back into the booth. ‘Are you gonna talk to her?’ he asks, passing me my pot.

‘Maybe.’

I take the conversation elsewhere, but it circles back to the girl.

‘Go talk to her,’ Deng tells me. ‘We’ve got one life. What’s the use of making a list of things you wish you had have done?’

I wave off his wisdom. ‘Forget about it.’

‘Come on, mate.’ He leans in. ‘Those who hesitate masturbate.’

I shrug. ‘It’s not so bad.’ Since I’ve never copulated, having a tug is all I know.

He shakes his head. ‘That attitude will never get you laid.’

Another pot is gone, amber ale swimming in my stomach, and I feel drunk enough to feel good, numb enough to not know better.

She’s just a girl, I tell myself. But why can’t my eyes stop wandering to her?

‘Oi, Paddy, my bones are restless.’ Deng points his head to the brimming dance floor.

Through some bodies, I catch a flash of lilac in the crowd. Deng beams his infectious white-toothed smile, raising his eyebrows up and down trying to imbue me with confidence and urgency.

Now there’s no choice. He stands and summons me. ‘One life, Paddy.’

I’ve got nothing to fear—I can be a normal human being.

Deng leads, and I follow, squeezing through smelly bodies on the dance floor, collecting mementos of sweat and spilled alcohol. A dance floor full of people who aren’t quite dancing, and where the floor is not quite visible. People are funny, and so am I with my liquid courage, any apprehension back in the booth with that lame, sober me.

She’s only a few metres away. Her friend says something to her, and the girl glances over her shoulder, smiling.

Deng taps my shoulder. ‘That’s ya cue, mate.’

I take it, like only someone possessed by ethanol can.

My big toe catches on a raised part of the flooring. Perhaps I should take this as an omen—stop, reset, and go back to the booth. I’m too drunk and happy to turn back now though.

One life, motherfucker.

She turns to me as I approach. Girls this gorgeous shouldn’t have smiles so bright. It’s just not fair.

‘Hi,’ I say. ‘My name’s Hair and I like your Paddy.’

Shit.

I want to clamber back inside my shell and flee—get the hell out of here. The air on Sydney Road will be fresher.

One life, motherfucker.

I hold out my hand to the girl with lilac hair.

She grins and takes it. ‘Well, I like your Ashi and my name’s Nose Ring.’

Anxiety assuaged, I introduce Deng, and then Ashi introduces Sabrina, her elder sister.

The four of us dance for a time, then we sit and chat. The girls are new in town from Sydney. While Sabrina is mad about sport, which Deng loves, Ashi reads a lot, which I love. We separate in pairs, and time vanishes with Ashi. Turns out she’s also starting Year Twelve next week and is underage and here with a fake ID too.

And it turns out that I’m the cool kid for the night. I’m not me.

Some discussions after Fahrenheit 451 and what we think will be on the Hottest 100 the day after tomorrow, the music stops, and the lights turn on.

We stumble out the front, where the festivity has shifted. The clock’s ticked over to Australia Day, and a Sydney Road street party ensues. Deng joins the group in boisterous chants and renditions of quintessential anthems before Sabrina shuts him up with a kiss. We leave the revelry. Deng and I muck around, dancing in the street, to make the girls laugh.

‘You two are crazy,’ Ashi says.

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ I reply.

We share a smile, and I feel as though I know her well.

‘We’re going back to mine,’ Deng says, wrapping his arm around Sabrina.

Sabrina points at me, sternly. ‘Get my sister home safe, Paddy.’

I assure her on Deng’s bald head that I will.

Ashi and I leave Deng and Sabrina. We walk north on Sydney Road and pass the formal store. I glance up at the CCTV cameras and think of Jill, like every time I’m near this part of Brunny. I was still living out east when it happened, but I felt it. Everyone did.

‘So, what do you do for fun in Melbourne?’ Ashi asks.

We turn down Hope Street, and I kick an empty Big M carton. ‘Other than get drunk, rely on caffeine, and pretend dirty is cool?’

She giggles. ‘What about the football? Deng seems to love it.’

‘It’s a religion for some. Me, I’m an atheist.’

‘I wasn’t big on rugby, either.’ Ashi swerves in front of me and punts the carton down that laneway. ‘Hey. You never told me what school you go to.’

I answer, and to my dismay, it turns out we have another thing in common.

‘What’s it like?’ Ashi asks.

I bow my head diffidently. ‘School’s school.’

Yep, school’s school. A place where you sit alone and avoid certain areas at certain times and walk on the opposite side of the hall to certain people. That’s school to me, anyway.

‘You’re a bit of an introvert, aren’t you, Paddy?’

‘Only after midnight.’

‘Guess you’re not gonna tell me what you think of me then.’

‘Umm …’ I fumble for words. ‘I think you’re cool …’

Smooth as sandpaper. Well played, Cowen. Well played. A slow clap sounds in my mind.

Ashi laughs and takes hold of my flittering hand. ‘I think you’re cool too. Tell me something, if you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be?’

The noise in town has faded, and the stars seem to be shining like they would in the bush, twinkles bright enough to light the way. I think of Kaylee: her cheeky smile, grubby blonde hair, and the birthmark on her neck. Would I be there with her right now if I could be, lost beneath blue gums in white rays of moonlight?

‘I just want to be here,’ I reply, not sure if it’s possible.

‘Here’s a good place,’ Ashi replies.

I stay; she keeps me.

Ashi stops in front of a set of units. ‘Well, this is me.’

‘It’s been a fun night,’ I reply.

She nods. ‘It has.’

There’s an awkward pause, and theoretically, this is the time I could lean down and kiss her, bring her into me, even be so bold as to suggest going inside with her. That’s what people do. Normal people.

But I’m me.

I lean down and give her a peck on the cheek, deeply inhaling the smell of her floral perfume. The feel of her body against mine is comforting, too cosy to be real.

‘Goodnight, Nose Ring,’ I say.

A hint of a smile rises on her face. ‘Goodnight, Hair …’

She’d be disappointed and confused if