The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson (e book reader online txt) 📕

for spotting the important parenting moments was, how I could never quite get there when it came to saying or doing the right thing.

Like the time that Mrs bloody stuck-up Sorrenson from the Post Office rang me and told me she’d just seen Jax and Norman drinking cans of beer in somebody’s cow paddock. Seen them with her own eyes, she had. I know I should have confronted them about the beer drinking, grounded Norman and banned Jax from coming over for two weeks. But instead I made a crack about how it was lucky she hadn’t been looking with someone else’s eyes then, or else she might have missed something. You nosey old bag. I was pretty sure that was the reason my electricity bill and two reminders went missing so I didn’t even know it was overdue until they cut it off.

When Jax and Norman came home, green around the gills from their beer-drinking experiment, they stood there with the flowers they’d picked for me along the way and waited for their medicine. When I didn’t say anything Jax even asked if I’d heard from Mrs Sorrenson lately. No, I said. Not a peep. Because part of me loved the fact that those boys had gone out and sat in some old cow paddock and done some secret beer drinking together. I mean, actually, half their bloody luck.

But this was different, and I knew it. All those other times I hadn’t said or done the right thing might be forgiven if I could just say and do the right thing, right here and now, leaning over the fence behind the Little Creek Arms, slightly west of the middle of nowhere. Only the truth of it was that I still didn’t know what the right thing was. Because making the choice between protecting Norman from what might happen and mending him from what had already happened felt way beyond my skills.

Norman scuffed the ground with his trainers, silently waiting for me to be the parent.

‘Norman, I . . . you . . . you know none of this . . . I mean, we can still . . . if you don’t think you . . .’ My words were whipped up by the wind, clipping into disjointed syllables. Everything I wanted to say was right there waiting in the wings, but something had hold of my larynx and was strangling the life out it.

Why couldn’t we just have a bit more time to work it out? A couple more years for him to get over the loss of the funny one. To grow out of his dream. To change his mind and want to be a teacher or a doctor or even a used-car salesman. Anything other than the person he thought he wanted to be. Because doesn’t he know it’s hands down the saddest bloody job in the world, spending your life trying to make people laugh? It doesn’t matter, love, let’s go home.

‘I . . . look, what I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t feel like . . . I mean, you could wait till next year and we . . . I just think maybe you’re not . . . not quite . . . Norman, please don’t do it.’

My voice was so quiet by the end I wasn’t even sure I’d really said it. I hoped I hadn’t, but I already knew I’d done it all wrong anyhow. I should have eased him into it, let him think it was his idea. Told him it would all be OK, that Jax would have understood if he couldn’t do it. Played dirty.

But wind or no wind, Norman hadn’t missed a thing. He looked down at the hand that he’d placed on the fence next to mine, turning it over to pick at an errant loose scab on his shiny pink palm. He moved the flap of skin back and forth, back and forth, like he was playing a tiny foosball machine, knowing exactly how much pressure it could take before it drew blood or fell off. All those years of practice. There was so much tenderness in him, even for the monster that had tormented him for most of his life.

He bent his body forward and laid his forehead gently on the back of my hand. I felt the smoothness of his new skin and the breath caught in the back of my throat. I could have died happy right there and then with that silky small-boy forehead on my hand, but the moment was gone all too soon.

Norman raised his head and slowly smiled at me and, for a glorious moment, there was my boy again.

‘Don’t worry about it, Mum.’ Of course he’s going to do it.

‘Of course I’m going to do it.’ Norman stared out into another universe somewhere over my shoulder. ‘Do you remember what Jax used to say? That when you’re scared to do something, even if everything’s going to hell in a hand basket you should just think about the worst thing that could possibly happen and then get in there and have a go anyhow? Remember?’

I remembered. I braced myself on the rickety wooden fence, because it felt a bit like the ground was moving towards me.

‘And Mum, don’t you see?’ He turned to face me and a wobbly smile attempted a run at the corners of his mouth. ‘The worst thing already happened. Everything already went to hell in a hand basket, so it’s all got to be OK from now on, because nothing else could ever, ever be that bad. You don’t have to worry about me, Mum, honest.’ Look after Mum.

I felt the world slow down, shudder and grind to a halt as I looked into my son’s eyes and all of a sudden realized with absolute clarity what I’d been way too blinded by my own sadness to notice since Jax had died. Norman was so much braver than I would ever be. I pressed the ball of one hand into my stomach to dull the tingling around the edges of my scar