fiction | Tony Birch

GIFTED

I CUPPED A HAND to the side of my face and squinted through the window into Ray’s front room. Light flickered from the television set. This didn’t indicate much though as the set was left running day and night. Mercifully the sound went months ago, as did the neighbours’ complaints about the noise.
    I knocked at the window and listened for any response – the retreat of his heavy feet scuffing into a hiding place in his bedroom. I had been nursing his birthday present under my arm. I put it on the ground, between my feet, wrapped both hands around my mouth and called out to him.
    “Ray. Ray. You in there?”
    Just as I had called his name a third time the door to the flat above Ray’s opened. I heard footsteps on the landing. I looked up to see a young girl, about fourteen or fifteen years old maybe, poking her head over the balcony. She moved back and forward a couple of times before resting her chin on the steel railing. She watched me through a mop of straw falling across her freckled cheeks.
    “He’s not in, you know? Saw him go off about half an hour ago. Leaves the same time every day. Gets back at the same time too. Except on weekends. I reckon he’ll be a while yet. He gets back just before the Midday Movie comes on. We hear him at the gate. My mum, you know what she says when she hears him coming back? She says, ‘Here he is. He’s back.’ She’s always saying that.”
    I did not want to get stuck in a conversation with Ray’s young neighbour. I thanked the girl for the information she had offered and bent forward to retrieve the package.
    “That’s all right. No bother. I seen him leaving from our kitchen window when I was making my mum a cup of tea. She’s sick, she’s a bit . . . well, she’s sick, so I’m off school looking after her.”
    The girl took a packet of cigarettes from her pocket and lit up.
    “You want one? I can throw them down to you if you want one. You want a cigarette?” She went on talking without a pause.
    “You know, he only had his sandals on. Freezing cold and he’s got no shoes on. No socks. Bare feet and sandals. Always does that. He was only wearing a T-shirt too. No jumper, no jacket or nothing. Why’s he do that, you reckon? Go out in the freezing cold dressed like that? Do you know him? You look a bit like him. Are you two related or something?”
    She halted for another drag on the cigarette.
    “Is he all right? You know, I mean, all right? My mum says he must be off the planet or something. You know last week I was watching him from the kitchen window, looking down the lane, up to the yard behind Jackson’s, when he come along the lane with both arms loaded with junk mail. I called to mum, to get up from the couch and come over to the window for a look. ‘Look at him,’ I said. Well, she looked out the window and just laughed – ‘mad bastard’, she called him. That’s what she said, ‘mad bastard’. I seen him another time pulling junk mail out of the letterboxes all along the street. Mail that had just been delivered that same day. Brought it home with him, the lot.”
    She took a final puff on the cigarette, flicked the butt over the balcony, lifted her head in the air and blew the smoke into a rapidly closing sky.
    “What do you think of that? Why would he do that, do you reckon? Junk mail? It’s just junk, isn’t it? That’s why they call it junk mail, don’t they? Because nobody wants the stuff.”
    I desperately wanted to leave. There was no certainty that Ray would return any time soon like the girl said he would. He sometimes walked the streets for hours on end, pacing out mile after mile.
    I looked around the verandah. I could leave the present behind the tattered cane chair, go home and call him later. He rarely answered the telephone either, but I could at least leave a message on the machine, letting him know where he could find it. I wouldn’t have to talk to him either, just leave a ‘greeting’ message.
    Just as I had resolved to desert the front porch a clap of thunder exploded above my head, quickly followed by a sudden downpour. I heard the door above my head slam shut. I huddled under a concrete awning over the front door and looked out into the street through the downpour. I decided against making a run for the car and turned a large empty terracotta pot upside down, pushed it into the sheltered corner of the verandah with the toe of my shoe and sat down to watch the rain flood Ray’s front yard.
    Holding the gift in my hands I looked down into a pattern of what were supposed to be party balloons, I guessed. Their thin elongated shapes gave the appearance of condoms – party condoms, maybe?
I had bought T-shirts for him, plain colours – white, grey and black. Ray favoured T-shirts. He refused anything else as a birthday or Christmas present. No bright colours, no stripes, just plain T-shirts.
    One year, worried that he was going to catch pneumonia, my mother bought him three checked flannel shirts for his birthday. “Won’t fit,” he mumbled as he placed the shirts on her kitchen table without bothering to remove them from the cellophane wrapping.
    She looked over at me anxiously as I sat on the couch nursing my baby daughter, Rosie. Although I could see that my mother was upset I responded with little more than shrugging my shoulders, knowing that Ray could not be persuaded to do something he did not want to do. She tried anyway. “But Ray, you haven’t even put them on. They’re your size love – Small Men’s.”

I HEARD A NOISE at the gate. It was Ray. He did not say a word to me as he came in. I moved away from the door as he fumbled with his keys. He stood on the doormat in a pair of worn-out thin-soled rubber sandals, his regulation grey pants and a dark T-shirt clinging to his prematurely stooped frame. He was carrying a pile of junk mail under one arm. He opened the door and went inside, letting the wire door slam against my shoulder as I followed him.
    The front room was as neat as I had remembered it, sparsely furnished, with everything in its place. The only potential disorder was provided by Ray’s homemade bookshelves. He had begun constructing them soon after moving into the flat. They progressively covered most of the available wall space in the lounge room as he purchased an increasing number of second-hand books.
    The shelves were built from broken-down timber pallets that Ray had retrieved from the loading bay of the stove factory in the next street. Ray had always been good with his hands. He could make almost anything when he was a kid. Billycarts, fighter planes and his favourite: intricately designed model houses created from little more than ice-cream sticks, matchboxes and cigarette packets.
    “Who taught you to do that?”, one of my mother’s boyfriends asked Ray one night as he pored over one of the model towns sitting on the coffee table. Ray wouldn’t answer him. He wouldn’t look at him either. But Ray had not learnt from anyone. He was self taught. He would sit patiently at the table of a night, building models copied from the paintings and photographs he studied in magazines and books.
    I looked across to the wall behind Ray, convinced that the gravity-defying structure of crooked shelving laden with books and magazines would inevitably collapse into the room. He stood in the centre of the room, impatiently resting his hands on his hips. Water dripped from his hair and clothing, then down his legs and onto his feet, before running under the soles of his sandals and onto the worn carpet.
    “Ray. Dry yourself off. Change your clothes. You’ll catch a cold or something.”
    He would not answer me and did not move. I noticed a towel resting over the back of a kitchen chair. I handed him the towel with one hand and the gift with the other.
    “Happy Birthday, Ray.”
    He let the towel fall to the ground and took the gift awkwardly in his hands. He looked down into the wrapping paper.
    “Balloons.”
    I had no idea what he was referring to.
    “What?”
    He pointed to the paper.
    “Balloons.”
    I ignored him.
    “Open it. The gift.”
    He tore the parcel open and glanced at the T-shirts before throwing them on the couch behind him. He held the wrapping paper in his hands. I felt around in the side pocket of my jacket for his card.
    “Here. I got the kids to sign it. Rosie drew a picture of herself on the back of the card. Here, have a look.”
He let the wrapping paper fall to the ground as he snatched the envelope from me. He cupped it in his hand as he ran his fingers across the surface and the 6-year-old scripted “RAY!”
    “Open it, Ray.”
    But he wouldn’t. He looked down at the envelope, following his fingertips as they looped small circles over the surface of the paper.
    I watched him with increasing frustration before finally snatching the envelope from his hand and tearing the card open. I let the paper fall to the floor. It landed next to the wrapping paper.
    I lifted the opened card toward his face. “Read it, Ray. Read the card, will you?”
    He would not even look at it. His eyes were fixed on the floor. He bent forward and picked up the torn envelope and wrapping paper before walking through the kitchen and into the bathroom. He closed the door behind him.
    I noticed another card sitting on one of the bookshelves. I walked over, picked it up and read it. It was from my mother, and was addressed to ‘Golden Boy’. Although Ray was a grown man she persisted in treating him as if he were still a child. Next to the card, in one of those cheap tin frames that had probably belonged to my grandmother was a photograph of him, taken when he was about 12 years old; all luscious curls, caramel eyes and a beautiful smile.
    I picked up the frame. Looking more closely into the image I noticed the dark rings under his eyes and the look of apprehension on his face, even then.
    I looked across to the bathroom door. I understood that it would be best for both of us if I left before we had an argument. But as it was his birthday I did not want to leave without at least saying goodbye. I walked through the kitchen, switching off the TV as I went.
    When I got to the bathroom door I called his name and knocked a couple of times. I waited for a reply before walking in.
    The heat in the room was stifling. A two-bar electric wall heater buzzed erratically above the towel cupboard. Ray was looking down into the bath. The torn birthday envelope and wrapping paper were sinking in a grey sludge in the bottom of the bath. Along the side of the bath, leaning against the glass door of the shower recess were twin towers of paper, comprised of junk mail and a few old newspapers. Both stacks reached close to the ceiling. A third tower of paper lurked behind the shower recess. Ray and I looked down into the bath together as the envelope disappeared into the quagmire.
    I looked around the room. On a narrow table sitting beneath the heater were two rows of cars – model cars fashioned from papier-mâché. They looked both grotesquely alien and immediately familiar. Although I had not seen it for years I recognised that these almost identical models were themselves replicas of a model Morris Minor that Ray had won in a lucky dip at the school fete when he was about eight or nine. He treasured the car from the day be brought it home and would not let me touch it, let alone play with it.
    Looking more closely at the drying models I noticed that each of them was in fact slightly different, in shape, colour and texture. I could make out faded water-damaged images on the duco, along with bold headline letters and splices of words on bonnets, doors, even the hubcaps –
“. . . OWARD NOT SOR . . .”
    I could hardly believe what I was looking at.
    “Ray, these are amazing. I mean, really amazing.” I moved to pick up one of the cars, before noticing that they were not quite dry. I withdrew my hand. Ray gave me an inquisitive look before walking out of the bathroom.
    I could hear him moving around his bedroom. I walked out into the hallway and moved toward the room before hesitating and walking back into the lounge. I heard the front gate creak open. It was probably my mother. She came over twice a week and cleaned the flat for him.
Ray came back into the front room. He was holding a model car in his hand. This one was dry and it had been painted. It was similar in colour to the original model, baby blue. He presented the car to me.
    “Here. I made this for you.”
    I took the car gently into my hands. I was touched by both Ray’s craftsmanship and his generosity. I felt a pang of guilt, thinking that while I resented having to spend just a few minutes with him on his birthday he had been dedicating his time to this project for me.
    There was a knock at the door. Ray looked over and then down at the model car in my hands. It seemed that he had no intention of answering the door, so I walked over and opened it.
    A man wearing a crumpled pin-striped suit and sporting a slicked-back fifties rocker hairdo, streaked with flecks of grey, stood in the doorway. He was waving a fan of glossy brochures teasingly in my direction.
    “Afternoon, afternoon. Well, it’s a little damp underfoot. Yes, hey, yes? Now, let’s see, yes? I am here this afternoon on behalf of the . . .”
    I was holding the door strategically ajar. I could feel Ray’s laboured breath on the back of my neck. He pushed me to one side, grabbed the handle of the door and swung it open. He leaned across the doorway and with one swift movement snatched the brochures from the salesman’s hand and replaced them with another of his model cars.
    “Here. I made this for you.”
    I stood watching the two of them, nursing my papier-mâché model in my hands. The salesman looked down at his own car. Ray stepped between us. He was carrying a black plastic garbage bag over his shoulder. He rushed into the street. It continued to rain. Ray was as ever oblivious to the weather. And he was in a hurry.
    I slammed the front door behind me and followed him into the street, leaving the salesman standing on the doormat, looking down at his Morris Minor with an immediate sense of attachment. The girl from upstairs was down at the row of letterboxes. She had a red parka draped over her head as she dug her hand deeply into her mailbox. But there was nothing for her.
    Ray reached into the garbage bag and pulled out another powder-blue car. He tapped the girl on the shoulder. “Here. It’s my birthday. I made this for you.” He then looked at the sign above the letterboxes, running his fingers across the letters, NO JUNK MAIL.
    Ray carefully placed a model car on the top of each of the letterboxes before walking along the footpath in the pouring rain. He stopped for a moment at each house along the street.

Tony Birch is a writer, historian and creative writing lecturer at the University of Melbourne. His latest book is Shadowboxing (Scribe, 2006) a collection of ten linked stories.

© Tony Birch

Overland 184–spring 2006, pp.35–38

184 Contents

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