Then, a Tuesday, I didn’t call the number at all, but walked straight into the school. She was there in the same room, marking essays, and when I knocked, she caught sight of the doorway.
She smiled a great smile of the living.
“Matthew Dunbar,” she said, looking up at me. She stood at the desk and said, “Finally.”
* * *
—
As Clay had asked, I did go out to Silver.
I went there many times, often with Claudia Kirkby.
Tentatively at first, my father and I traded stories—about Clay as both son and brother. And I told him what Clay had asked me to, about the last time he saw Penelope—as the girl she once had been. Our father was mostly astonished.
At one point I nearly told him; I nearly said it but kept myself back:
I know now why you left.
But like so many other things, we can know it but leave it unsaid.
* * *
—
When they tore down the Bernborough Park grandstand, and replaced the old red rubber track, we somehow got the date wrong, and missed the inglorious moment.
“All those beautiful memories,” said Henry, when we went there to see the pieces. “All those gorgeous bets!” Those nicknames and boys at the fence line—the smell of never quite men.
I recalled the times Clay and I spent there, and then Rory and stopping him and punishment.
But of course, it’s Clay and Carey there.
It’s them I imagine best.
They’re crouched together, near the finish line.
It was one more sacred site of his, left hollow without him in it.
* * *
—
On the topic of sacred sites, The Surrounds, however, remains.
The Novacs have long left Archer Street, for a life back home in the country. But as councils go, and construction work, too, The Surrounds hasn’t yet been built on; and so Carey and Clay still own that place, at least according to me.
To be honest, I’ve grown to love that field, most often when I miss him hardest. I’ll wander out back, usually late at night, and Claudia comes to find me. She holds my hand and we walk there.
We have two young daughters, and they’re beautiful—they’re regretless; they’re the sound and color of being here. Would you believe we read The Iliad to them, and The Odyssey, and that both of them learn the piano? It’s me who takes them to lessons, and we practice back here at home. We’re here together at the MARRY-ME keys, and it’s me who watches, methodically. I sit with the branch of a eucalypt, and stall when they stop and ask me:
“Can you tell us about the Mistake Maker, Dad?” and of course, “Can you tell us about Clay?”
And what else can I do?
What can I do but close the piano lid, as we go in to face the dishes?
And all of it starts the same.