“Should I make you take your pants off, too?”
For a whole summer, we ate like that, our T-shirts heaped near the toaster. To be fair, though, and to Michael Dunbar’s credit, from the second time onwards, he took his own shirt off with us. Tommy, who was still in that beautiful phase when kids speak totally unfiltered, shouted, “Hey! Hey, Dad! What are you doing here in just your nipples?”
The rest of us roared with laughter, especially Penny Dunbar, but Michael was up to the task. A slight flickering in one of his triceps.
“And what about your mum, you blokes? Should she go shirtless, too?”
She never needed rescuing, but it was Clay who’d often be willing.
“No,” he said, but she did it:
Her bra was old and scruffy-looking.
It was faded, strapped to each breast.
She ate and smiled regardless.
She said, “Now don’t go burning your chests.”
We knew what to get her for Christmas.
* * *
—
In that sense there was always a bulkiness to us.
A bursting at the seams.
Whatever we did, there was more:
More washing, more cleaning, more eating, more dishes, more arguing, more fighting and throwing and hitting and farting, and “Hey, Rory, I think you better go to the toilet!” and of course, a lot more denying. It wasn’t me should have been printed on all our T-shirts; we said it dozens of times each day.
It didn’t matter how in control or on-top-of-things things were, there was chaos a heartbeat away. We could be skinny and constantly agile, but there was never quite room for all of it—so everything was done at once.
One part I remember clearly is how they used to cut our hair; a barber would have cost too much. It was set up in the kitchen—an assembly line, and two chairs—and we’d sit, first Rory and me, then Henry and Clay. Then, when it came to Tommy’s turn, Michael would cut Tommy’s, to give Penny a small reprieve, and then she’d resume and cut his.
“Hold still!” said our father to Tommy.
“Hold still,” said Penny to Michael.
Our hair lay in lumps in the kitchen.
* * *
—
Sometimes, and this one comes so happily it hurts, I remember when we all got into one car, the entire lot of us, piled in. In so many ways I can’t help but love the idea of it—how Penny and Michael, they were both completely law-abiding, but then they did things like this. It’s one of those perfect things, really, a car with too many people. Whenever you see a group squashed in like that—an accident waiting to happen—they’re always shouting and laughing.
In our case, in the front, through the gaps, you could see their hand-held hands.
It was Penelope’s fragile, piano-playing hand.
Our father’s powdery work hand.
And a scrum of boys around them, of blended arms and legs.
In the ashtray there were lollies, usually Anticols, sometimes Tic Tacs. The windshield was never clean in that car, but the air was always fresh; it was boys all sucking on cough drops, or a festival of mint.