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Chapter 13 : This is not covered by your excess
As the drips of a tap step apart he felt his father step away. Mother had slowly got more emotional.
When as a child, his father lifted him up to sit on his shoulders, at that time no higher place in the universe existed. They would go to the park and take turns reaching all the way up to the top of the slide, or the lower branches of the birch trees and liberating small leaves from the same and flicking them into the air and watching them spiral through the air and to dust, to dust. They would reach up to the bar at the top of the swings and grab on, leaving Dad walking forward, and he would turn around and ask very loudly if anyone had seen Charlie or Ed, and Daniel in the stroller with no seatbelt on would be pointing and giggling, and they would threaten to stay holding on up there until forever, or say that it was cold and their hands got stuck, and Dad would arrive within the ten seconds or so before a small child cannot actually hold their mass anymore several feet off the ground, and pretend to pull them down from the bar while somehow was holding them up, until they had to be tickled to pretend to surrender. To pretend to surrender, to surrender to pretend.
When as a child, he showed Daniel what Dad had showed him, to wit it is far easier to kick the bike off the ground with your feet and get the damn thing rolling first and let your feet find the pedals, and where else would they really go? Far better that than trying to get the bicycle moving by pushing down on the pedal when the torque is not smoothed by forward motion. Ed had never really known freedom and movement until he got his first bicycle moving through the shadows of trees up and down their street, suddenly realised the strap on his helmet was a bit loose over a bump, and he felt his shirt flapping in the breeze, and in that way of children he believed that the world and rolling movement had been made only for him just the day before. Daniel got it easily, and later on he had wanted to learn about motorbikes as well.
When as a nearly-teenager, he came across his mother crying in the sun chair in the lounge room, just putting the phone down from her brother George, Ed did not know what Cyclophosphamide was and he also did not know how to fuck off, which his mother shouted at him but immediately took back.
When as a new 13 year-old, what would be Bar Mitzvah and Mazeltov for another family, his father sat them all down on the lounge and tried to say, while trying to stop Charlotte frowning and laughing and ‘Yeah whatever’ and Daniel asking ‘but why Dad’ that there was going to be no television after 7pm and his mother running out into the driveway next day to stop the television going into the bin, and various snatches of overheard SHOUTING which Charlie said they’ve never shouted at each other like this it must be serious. And so they went along with the 7pm thing for a while and did their BORING homework and they went along with the Dad being in charge thing but jeez come on mum he’s not home all that much and you take us to more lessons and sports and Your father works very hard, dear, FOR ALL OF US.
When as the new owner of a Playstation 5, converted from newspaper deliveries and collecting a million or so 10-cent plastic bottles, he woke up early out of excitement and hoped to sneak into the lounge room to play a while with the headphones on before everyone else woke up and he heard a primordial wretched growl from the kitchen, the kind of animal suffering he had never heard before, and he saw his mother at the sink red-eyed and vomiting the cup of tea she had just attempted plus a bit more bile as a warning. Go on it said - attempt breakfast, we’re waiting. He rushed to hug her and then remembered something about the phrase cytotoxic and Mr Hitler got the mustard gas and look what happened to him but he didn’t know that this didn’t apply to this particular drug but he stopped where the floors changed from wooden boards to those terracotta-coloured tiles and he saw his mother pale in the face and gaunt and angry and resentful and in a way ashamed and Ed stopped right there and did not go to hug her and for the first time he saw his mother as a foreign object.
When as the very beginning of a man, his father frowning and slamming the cover of the book and huffing ‘that’s not how we do things in this family.’ Mother in the hospital. Uncle George visited a lot, just to help out he said, help out meaning sit and watch TV shows that the kids wanted to watch, and let them not do their homework, and let their father retreat to his reading and drafting. Jones (a synonym) v The Queen; whether rules of evidence were followed in assessing the credibility of historical claims of sexual abuse. APY12 v Minster for Immigration and Border Protection; whether appellant’s fear of persecution was well-founded; whether the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection did ‘adequately assess.’ And other such like, feverishly into the night.
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