Jesse makes a start on the balloons. He manages three – two red and a pink – before leaning back, breathless. He’d tried to quit smoking a few months ago and for five days all he could think about was durries. He kept picking up long thin objects, holding them between his index and middle fingers, raising them to his mouth: HB pencils in maths, a piece of rolled-up looseleaf, a set of wooden chopsticks that someone left on top of his school locker. Sometimes, he pressed the two fingers to his lips and sucked in air just to feel the sensation of pressure in his lungs. On the fifth day, he sat staring at his father’s packet of Holidays on the kitchen table until he finally caved and pinched one. The relief and calm when he inhaled was something out of this world.
Half a dozen more balloons and he’s done. He reaches for the gold metallic fringe and container of thumb tacks in his backpack. Then he walks down the hall to Caleb’s bedroom, pins the fringe above the door, and pushes a tack through the neck of each balloon and into the soft wood around the doorframe. He steps back to survey his handiwork. Yeah, it looks pretty okay.
Birthday breakfasts were their mother’s thing. Jesse’s tried to keep the tradition alive even though she’s been dead more than four years. Caleb was eight when the accident happened, Jesse twelve. This year, Caleb said he was too old for all the early morning birthday shit.
“It’s tradition,” Jesse replied. “It’s what we do.”
“We’ll stop after this one,” Caleb said. “Thirteen be the last.”
Jesse had gone down the pub the night before to convince their old man to part with cash for the cake and decorations. He found him sitting, gently snoring, chin resting against his chest. He pocketed the stack of coins next to a half glass of beer, and slipped a few durries out of the pack on top of the bar.
“You taking him home, son?” the barman asked, appearing out of nowhere.
“I’mnotfuckinggoinganywhere,” the old man growled, his eyes suddenly open. Jesse knew to get out of there as quick as he could.
After he’s arranged everything on the kitchen bench, Jesse bangs on Caleb’s door. For all his talk of being too old for birthday breakfasts, Caleb comes out straight away. His light brown hair is mussed from sleep, but his eyes are bright and alert, making Jesse think that he’s been lying awake listening to the preparations.
“What’s this?” he says, laughing as he fights his way through thin strips of gold foil. “Woah, balloons too.” He punches one and it dislodges, bouncing across the hall. “What did you get me?”
Jesse smiles and walks back into the kitchen where he lifts the plastic cover from an orange sponge cake and starts pushing candles into the thin white icing. Caleb follows, opens his card and gives a small whoop when he sees the scratchies inside. Then he picks up the one carefully wrapped package on the bench and tears off the paper to reveal a navy-blue beanie with Ripcurl written in white lettering across the band.
“Yaass,” Caleb says. “Is this from you?”
“Yeah,” Jesse says. “The scratchies are from the old man.”
He finds a lighter and gets to work on the candles. There’s the sound of the toilet flushing.
“Dad,” he shouts. “We’re about to sing happy birthday.”
He hears a cough, followed by a drawn-out hocking.
“What?”
“Come and sing happy birthday to Caleb.”
One of the candles flickers in the draft and Jesse cups his hand around the sputtering flame. There’s a loud yell from the hall and their old man walks into the kitchen, putting a drawing pin down on the bench.
“Got this fucking thing stuck in my foot,” he grunts.
“Thanks for the scratchies, Dad,” Caleb says.
“What?”
“The scratchies.” Caleb waves the cards at him.
“Oh right.” The old man’s hand is up the front of his t-shirt scratching his chest, revealing the hairless folds of his gut. “If you win, I’m taking half.” He starts to laugh but it liquifies into another round of coughing.
Jesse has all thirteen candles lit now and he pushes the plastic container gently so the cake is in front of Caleb. He launches into the song, limping through the lyrics, their father finally joining in for the last line. Caleb grins at the candles, before blowing them out with fierce enthusiasm. Jesse hands him a knife and he cuts into the cake, revealing flecks of orange peel that look like tiny scars on the surface of the pale sponge.
“It’s great,” Caleb says through a mouthful. “Good icing.”
“Bit dry,” their old man says. “Was it on special?”
Jesse busies himself sweeping crumbs into the sink with the back of his hand.
“’Cause if it wasn’t, it should have been.”
Jesse takes a bite of his own piece. It’s alright. Not great, but alright.
“Here,” he says cutting another chunk and pushing it towards Caleb. “Get stuck in.”
After Caleb’s done eating, Jesse eases the remaining candles out, wipes them and puts them back in the cupboard. Then he clips the plastic top over the cake and joins his old man outside for a durrie. Bottle caps and cigarette butts litter the strip of concrete beyond the porch and several longnecks lie discarded in the unmown grass.
“You got any money?” Jesse says. It comes out blunter than intended but his father doesn’t react.
“Why?”
“For Caleb’s birthday thing tonight.” He takes a long drag. “He wants to take Matt to the movies.”
“How much?”
“Twenty-five should cover it.”
“Fuck’s sake,” his old man huffs. “I’m not made of money.”
Jesse shoots him a nervous glance. His father’s cheeks are ribboned with broken blood vessels, the stubble on his shaved head growing in patches. There’s a scar that runs from his right eyebrow along the side of his cheek, dragging the corner of his eye downwards so that he looks permanently stoned. Not far from the truth, as it happens. He says weed helps with the headaches. He’d been a passenger in the crash that killed their mother. The two of them were driving home from a party out country. When Jesse woke up the morning after, their elderly neighbour was lying on the couch.
“I thought it best to leave you sleep,” the woman said sitting up, her clothes creased, a clump of short grey hair flattened on the side. She moved in for the few months that their father was in hospital. The food she cooked was strange: casseroles with flour dumplings and boiled corn beef. It was the week after Jesse turned twelve. His mum had made a double-layer chocolate cake for his birthday. He’d eaten three pieces for breakfast, and felt sick for the rest of the day. Worth it though.
“That’s how much movies cost,” Jesse says. He goes to say something else. Something about it being a reason to celebrate, turning thirteen, but his father interrupts.
“Yeah yeah, alright. I’ll get some money out today and bring it home.”
“Cheers,” Jesse says, with a swell of relief. He flicks his cigarette onto the grass and turns to go inside.
“Hey,” his father calls after him.
“What?”
“Get some more of that cake into you. You’re getting too fucking skinny.”
Thursdays after school, Jesse works down at Leslie’s bookshop. Leslie is a big woman who dresses in brightly coloured tunics that hang down over her black leggings. Jesse’s seen her struggle with the bundles of daily newspapers – straining and panting as she hoists them up onto the counter – but any boxes needing to be unpacked she’ll always leave for him.
“I hear it’s your brother’s birthday today,” she says.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Your dad was in here yesterday buying him a card,” Leslie says. “You tell Caleb happy birthday from me.”
“Will do.”
He slits a carton open with a utility knife and begins stacking the contents – writing sets and notepads – on a near-empty shelf. His mind drifts back to Caleb’s beanie. Pretty crap gift, really. More than Jesse usually gets but their old man’s repertoire of lotto tickets and scratchies isn’t much of a benchmark.
He opens a box of black retractable ballpoint pens and adds them to a container on the top shelf.
“Is he still getting into a bit of mischief?” Leslie asks.
“Caleb?” Jesse unwraps a packet of Marvel spiralbound notebooks from a layer of white polyfoam packaging. “Yeah, a bit.” He runs his hand over one of the rigid plastic covers. The front is a montage of old superhero comics. Caleb would think it was pretty cool for sure.
“I’ll pop a few of those on the counter, love,” Leslie says, reaching down with some effort to take several out of the carton. “Where the young ones can see them better.”
She’s right on the money with Caleb – he’s always up to some stupid shit. A few months ago it was bridge jumping. Jesse did plenty of that himself when he was younger. He can still remember the feeling: the quiver of nerves as his toes clawed the rough concrete edge of the bridge, the sudden jolt of the water. But what he can’t seem to get through to Caleb is that he should never be the one to jump first.
“I’m no chicken,” Caleb says, whenever Jesse tells him to hang back.
“It’s not about being chicken,” Jesse’s said, countless times. “It’s about waiting for someone else to check out the depth. That riverbed shifts all the time.”
“And what about your father?” Leslie asks, slowly making her way back to where Jesse is arranging the remaining notebooks.
“What about him?”
“Is he coping okay? He looked like the weight of the world was on him yesterday.”
“That’s how he always looks.”
“Is he working?”
“No,” Jesse says, feeling his face grow hot.
Leslie looks out the front window and changes the subject. She tells him the old butcher’s shop across the road is about to become a beautician’s.
“They’ll have to give it another coat of paint though,” she says. “You can still see the picture of the cow coming through.”
At five he picks up his school bag and says goodbye to Leslie, who’s standing in front of the till.
“Jessie,” she calls out as he nears the front door. “Might you have given someone the wrong change today?”
“No,” he calls back. “No, I don’t think so.”
The shops on the main street are closing: signboards are being brought inside, floors vacuumed. As he passes the furniture store, the doors slide open and Paul Tyler walks out carrying two pillows. Jesse buys gear off Paul from time to time. Not much and not often. Just occasionally to take the edge off. Paul sells point bags of meth for thirty bucks. A couple of puffs and he feels like a rockstar. Paul sells it by the half and full gram as well, although Jesse never has the cash for that.
Paul jerks his chin upwards, a curt acknowledgment. He’s taller than Jesse, and solid. A large tattoo of a black cross, wings emerging either end of the horizontal bar, stretches around his neck, up onto his shaved scalp. Jesse stares at the pillows Paul is holding, one in each hand. He imagines him in the shop, laying his head down on a pillow, saying This one’s a bit firm, have you got anything softer?
“Alright mate?” Paul says.
“Yeah,” he says, glad of the fading light. “I … I might text you later.”
Paul gives him a wink. “And I might reply.”
When Jesse opens the front door, he can smell weed. The smell gets stronger as he walks through the house. Caleb’s bedroom door is open, the room empty, the remains of the foil fringe spread across the floor. In the kitchen the old man is parked up at the table, a half-empty rigger in front of him. Dawn, the woman from a couple of houses down, is sitting opposite, telling some story that has the old man engrossed. It was one of her daughters – the middle one – who’d taken Jesse round to visit Paul that first time. The story ends and Dawn shrieks with laughter, the old man joining in a moment later. There are only a couple of crusts in the bread bag, one of them so thin at the end he can almost see through it. He puts it in the toaster anyway.
“Where’s Caleb?” he asks when the laughter dies down. What’s left of the birthday cake is sitting in the middle of the bench. The container is open, and a cigarette butt ringed with lipstick has been stubbed out on the lid, melting a small round hole in the plastic.
“Over at Matt’s.”
“Did you give him money for the movies?”
His father’s smile fades. “What?”
“Did you give him the money?” Jesse says, less confidently this time. “You know, like we talked about this morning?
“How about saying hello to our guest before you come in here whinging about money?”
He nods at Dawn, and she responds with a slight smirk. She’s dyed her hair since he saw her last. It used to be completely pink, but now she’s added strips of purple so that she looks like a Siamese fighting fish. One night last week, Jesse had got up to the toilet and found her standing naked in the hall. He’d looked away but not before his gaze had, mortifyingly, drifted downwards.
“Christ,” she’d said, retreating into his father’s bedroom. “You could fry a fucking egg on that face of yours.”
He busies himself getting a plate out of the cupboard, the peanut butter out of the fridge. The jar’s almost empty and he runs a knife around the inside, scraping what’s left onto the side of the plate. After a decent amount of time has passed, he takes a breath in and looks at his father.
“So, the money?”
“What money?”
“For Caleb’s birthday. The movies.” He tries to arrange his face into a neutral expression, eyes wide, mouth relaxed. “You know like we talked about this morning?”
“Fuck’s sake.”
“It’s his birthday.” Jesse swallows hard. “If you’ve got it on you, I can take it over.”
They stare at each other for a long moment. Jesse smells burning – the thin edge of the crust must have caught – but he doesn’t look away. Finally, his old man sighs, reaches into his pocket, and brings out a note. A twenty.
“They’ll need something to eat as well.”
Dawn laughs and his father swears again before emptying a handful of change onto the table.
Jesse throws the Marvel notebook on Caleb’s bed as he passes his room. He can still feel the indent of it against his stomach where it dug in above the waistband of his school shorts. In his own room, he changes out of his uniform and pulls on jeans and a green hoodie. He’s feeling tired and twitchy as he steps outside. He draws his hood up over his head against the cold and lights a durry. Watching his breath smoke around him, he takes out his phone and searches for Paul’s number in his contacts.
Jesse crosses the road to where Caleb’s friend Matt lives. It’s a state house like his own, only smaller and semi-detached. Most of the houses round here are government owned so everywhere you look, it’s peeling blue weatherboards and sections hemmed in with falling-down wooden fences. When his dad was still working, they’d rented down the south end of town near the primary school that Jesse went to, the one Caleb still attends. Where they live now is less than a ten-minute walk away, in a collection of streets that kids around town call The Ghetto. Jesse had teared up when his old man told him they were moving.
“Do you really think I need you making a fuss over nothing?” his father snapped. “Is that what you think I need right now?”
A set of steps leads up to the front of Matt’s house but Jesse makes his way down the well-kept side path and in through the back porch, knocking on the door just before he opens it. The kitchen is humid with cooking. Caleb and Matt are sitting opposite each other at a small square table set for three. Matt’s mother Tracy stands in front of the stove stirring a pan of tomato-coloured sauce. She smiles when she sees him.
“Come and join us,” she says. “I’m about to dish up.”
“I’m just dropping money off to Caleb,” he says. “For the movies.”
“But you’ll stay for dinner?” She moves to the sink where cooked pasta rests in a colander, a pair of tongs across the top. “I’ve made Caleb’s favourite.”
“Nah,” Jesse says. “I’m all good.”
“You’ve had tea?”
“Some toast and that.” He feels the heat in his face like he’s been caught in a lie.
Tracy smiles. “Well, sit up then.”
Jesse never gets embarrassed when he’s high. People can say anything to him, ask him anything. Anything at all. It never flusters him. And he can talk to anyone – girls, Paul’s mates, his old man – no matter who it is, 100% guaranteed his words will come out fluidly and in the right order. He checks his phone. No reply. He crosses to the table and takes the chair next to Caleb. Underneath the table a fan heater whirs, sending a stream of warm air around the bottom of his legs.
“Hat looks good on,” he says ruffling the hair that’s sticking out the front of Caleb’s new beanie.
Caleb laughs and pushes his hand away. “Get off.”
“Since when was spag bol your favourite?”
“Since always.”
“Thought it was that chicken thing Mum used to make. With the cheese and the bacon.”
Caleb shrugs and Jesse stares at him for a long moment before turning to nod at Matt. The two boys have hung out since their first year of school but, even though they’re tight as, there’s something about the friendship that makes Jesse uncomfortable. He can easily imagine Matt egging Caleb on towards the edge of the bridge.
“Teflon-coated, that mate of his,” the old man said after Caleb owned up to smashing three windows in the school library one rainy lunch time. “Fucking unfair, making him cop all the blame. Like he ever came up with an original idea in his life.”
It didn’t stop him taking the jug cord to Caleb’s legs, backhanding Jesse when he’d attempted to intervene.
The plate of food Tracy sets in front of him smells unreal and he says so. Next to him, Caleb has his face down almost to the plate. Jesse twists strands of sauce-coated pasta around his fork as he watches Tracy walk back over to the sink, rinse out a glass and fill it with water.
“Are you not eating?” he asks, putting his fork down.
“I had some earlier.” Her gaze shifts to Caleb. “What movie did you decide on?”
Jesse’s phone buzzes in his pocket and he eases it out, reads the message.
All gd home til 7.30.
“Divergent. Not much to choose from.”
“Like the book?” Tracy asks.
“Dunno.”
“I think it is,” Tracy says. “I loved that book. I’d like to see that if it is.”
“You should come with us.”
“Like fuck,” Matt says.
“Matt!”
“Yeah well, you’re not coming,” Matt glares across the table at Caleb. “Why did you even say that for?”
“It was a joke,” Caleb wipes his mouth with the back of his hand leaving a red smear across his skin. “You knew it was a joke, yeah?” he says to Tracy.
“Yeah,” she says. “’Course I did, love.”
“Speaking of movies.” Jesse reaches into his pocket for the note his father gave him.
“Twenty?” Caleb says. “I thought you said we could get something to eat.”
“Yeah sorry, that’s all he gave me.” Jesse shrugs. “There’ll be a bit left over after the tickets. Enough for a pack of Mentos or something.”
Caleb frowns slightly, his face screwing up so that for a moment he’s the spitting image of their old man. But then he grins and he’s himself again, “Yeah, no worries.”
Nothing ever seems to bother him for long. Water off a duck’s back. It’s like Jesse got all the worrying that was going – enough for both of them – and Caleb was born with none. Jesse wonders how the night will play out. The old man usually heads to the pub on a Thursday. But he’ll be short of cash now, which means he’ll likely be home for the evening.
“Best go in your bedroom window after the movie,” he says to Caleb in a low voice.
“Yeah?” Caleb says.
“Definitely.”
Matt’s trying to get money out of Tracy.
“Come on,” he says. “It’s not the same without popcorn and Coke.”
Jesse takes out his phone and checks the time. Reads Paul’s reply again.
“You’ve got money,” Matt says. “You did that big cleaning job and they paid cash, you said.”
Jesse looks up.
“That’s to go towards the power bill,” Tracy says.
“But you didn’t know you were going to get that much. You said it was a bonus. Those were your exact words.”
“Have you got enough there, love? Tracy looks at Jesse. “There’s a wee bit of sauce left over.”
“I’ll have it,” Caleb says quickly and Jesse winces. Not that he’s hungry now; the thought of visiting Paul has him antsy as, and it’s an effort to even finish what’s on his plate. He puts his hand into his pocket – feels the folded notes, the weight of the coins.
“You said it was a bonus,” Matt says again. “That means you weren’t expecting it. That’s the definition of a bonus.”
Tracy takes Caleb’s plate over to the stove and spoons out the remaining sauce from
the pan.
“Mum!”
“Just because I wasn’t expecting it doesn’t mean we don’t need it,” Tracy says
quietly, placing the plate back in front of Caleb.
“But it’s Caleb’s birthday.”
Annoyance flickers across Tracy’s face. But then, just as suddenly, it’s gone and she smiles.
“Yeah, yeah, ’course it is,” she says.
She walks across to the kitchen bench, opens a drawer and takes out her wallet. Pulling out a ten-dollar note, she hands it to Matt.
“Maybe try and bring me home some change, yeah?”
Jesse’s eyes follow her as she places the wallet in the top drawer. When he looks back he notices Caleb has sauce down the front of his sweatshirt.
After the boys have gone, Jesse clears the dirty plates from the table and stacks them neatly on the bench while Tracy fills the sink with water.
“How’s your dad doing?” Tracy asks.
“Alright, I guess.”
“Still getting his headaches?”
“Yeah, a bit.” He picks up the tea towel that’s hanging over the handle of the oven door. “I think he’s got a girlfriend.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He holds up a plate. “Where do these live?” The plate has a small chip out of the side of it and he runs his thumb over the rough edge. His eyes flick across to Tracy and then back to the dish in his hand. “That woman from across the road with the pink hair.”
“Sorry?” Tracy’s forehead puckers into a frown.
“Who Dad’s with.”
“Oh, right,” Tracy says. “That’s nice.” She wrings out the dishcloth. “Plates go in the top cupboard to your right.”
“Not nice for Caleb. Not if those daughters of hers start hanging round our place.”
“No?” Tracy crosses to the table and wipes it down. “They seem pleasant enough.”
“Yeah, well they’re not. “Specially not that middle one.”
He takes a handful of forks and opens what he thinks is the cutlery drawer, but instead finds himself looking at a writing pad, some spare keys, and a few decks of playing cards. In the corner of the drawer, nestled on top of a collection of takeaway menus, is Tracy’s wallet. It’s rectangular in shape, made from a light pink fabric with a shiny plastic flap that closes with a dome. The fabric is grimy in places and the plastic has started to split.
“Cutlery is the next drawer over,” Tracy says, crossing back to the sink. She rinses the dishcloth under the tap and pulls the plug out, triggering a loud gurgling noise as the water drains. “He’s lucky to have you. You’re doing a great job.”
“Maybe I could make a career out of it,” he says. “Professional dryer of dishes.”
Tracy laughs. “No,” she says. “With Caleb. You’re doing a great job looking out for him.”
Jesse feels his colour rising again. Picking up the last pot, he rubs the tea towel indiscriminately around the inside and puts it in the cupboard beneath the sink, before hanging the towel back over the oven door handle. He checks the time on his phone. Just after quarter to seven.
“I’m about to put the jug on,” Tracy says. “You’ll stay for a cuppa?”
He hesitates. An image of the wallet flashes into his head: tab closure straining against its contents.
“Yeah sure,” he says. “That’d be great.”
He sits back down at the table while Tracy fills the jug with water, plugs it in and takes two cups from the cupboard. The heater clicks on and he feels a blast of warm air against his shins. His eyes drift across to the drawer.
“Hope you don’t take milk,” Tracy says. “I’m all out.” She puts a teabag in each of the cups as the jug begins its slow rumble. Jesse taps the sole of his sneaker on the lino floor in a staccato-like beat, badly wanting a durry. He takes out his phone and looks at it again. Six fifty-three.
“Any idea what you’ll do when you leave school?” Tracy says, spooning sugar into one of the cups. “Apart from a possible career drying dishes.”
“Dunno really. Maybe an electrical apprenticeship.”
“Great.” She carries the cups of tea to the table and takes the seat opposite him. “It’d be handy to know a sparky.”
A phone begins to ring somewhere in the house. Tracy smiles apologetically, gets up and crosses to the door. A few seconds later the ringing stops. She seems pleased to hear from whoever is on the other end, her voice animated as she chats away.
It only takes a second and he’s standing by the kitchen bench. Sliding the drawer open and picking up the wallet. It feels heavy in his hand. He pops open the domed flap to reveal a handful of receipts along with a small stack of ten- and twenty-dollar notes. Thirty, he thinks. She won’t miss thirty. Or even fifty: two twenties and a ten. She might not have even counted it yet.
He eases the three notes up above the height of the others. He can feel the plastic smooth under his thumb as he folds the money and slips it into his pocket. Then something catches his eye. Tucked into a clear sleeve on the inside of the wallet is a photo of Matt and Caleb. It’s a school portrait. The two of them sit side-by-side grinning against a grey background. Not recent. The picture is faded and both boys’ front teeth are uneven white stubs too big for their faces. Jesse can’t remember ever seeing the photo before. Tracy must have put in a special request to have it taken. He imagines her calling the school office to make the arrangements – the school secretary calm and efficient, noting down the details. He stares at the image for a second or two and something lightens inside of him, like he’s put down a heavy package. Dimly aware that Tracy’s conversation is winding up, he puts his hand in his pocket, draws out the notes and pushes them, still folded, back into the wallet. His fingers are awkward as he presses the opposite sides of the dome together. It refuses to fasten. He tries again, his heart beating faster as he opens the wallet and smooths out the creases in each of the notes, one-by-one. He brings the edges together again and this time it holds. Placing the wallet on top of a menu for an Indian restaurant, he shuts the drawer.
He’s sitting at the table again when Tracy comes back into the room. He takes a mouthful of tea and blinks like he’s just woken up.
“Everything okay?” she says.
“Yeah, good.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s just a bit hot.” He gestures at the mug in front of him.
“Let me put some cold water in it,” she says, reaching across the table.
“Nah.” He holds his palm across the top of the cup. “It’s all good.”
Outside he hears voices and the sound of a car door slamming. He’ll head off to Paul’s soon. He tells Tracy about the cow on the sign above the new beautician’s and they both laugh. His phone buzzes but he doesn’t check it.
Claire Gray lives in Ōtautahi/Christchurch, New Zealand. She has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Canterbury and in 2022 completed her MA in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her short stories have been published in ReadingRoom, Headland, Turbine and Swamp.