Disconnected

Irritated car horns sound at their impediment to their progress.  A police car diagonally blocks two lanes of a busy street in the city, as spectators stop to forget their mundane lives with the spectacle. 

A high school student is roughly pushed against the police car, as the long arm of the law struggle to shackle him.  The sleeves of the blazer he has yet to grow into proving a hindrance to the handcuffs. 

I keep walking the pressure of my own deadline pushes my legs forward.  Just before I cross the road I glance back to see the two officers finish loading him in.  As they slam the door on his freedom my internal soundtrack begins to play on old Supergrass song:

Caught by the fuzz

Well I was, still on a buzz

In the back of the van

With my head in my hands

Just like a bad dream

I was only fifteen.

By the time I got home that night I was consumed by my own petty problems as usual, until I opened the door.  My mother sat slumped over the table softly whimpering.  My father stood behind her, he reached out his hand towards her hair but continued on to the bottle of bourbon on the table, to fill his half empty glass.

He looked up expectantly as I entered, as if my presence alone would ease the tension.

“Hi hon,” his forced smile cracking his face, as his hovering hand finally came to rest on mums shoulder, with a gentle squeeze.

My first thought was, oh no someone died. 

“Your brother’s in jail.”  My father’s strained voice betrayed a hint of anger.

The shock wave hit me with the sound of the telephone, its hollow ring resounding with the memory of this afternoon, and the boy who was wearing my brothers’ school colours.

It probably shouldn’t have hit us so hard.  We knew he dabbled, the amount of times he’d come home stoned or scattered were proof enough.  Mum and dad decided to ignore it, which they did with anything that became too real, preferring to worry about asylum seekers or anything that didn’t affect them directly. 

I overheard my father on the phone with my uncle, his own account of the arrest sketchy and then the conversation became heated as my father attempted to justify the reason why he wasn’t going to the hearing in the morning.

“He’s eighteen Roger. . . That doesn’t matter, the law says I don’t need to be there. . . Hey!  I didn’t ask the cops to arrest him!”  He slams the phone down, cursing which I take as my cue to leave the room.

Being the big sister I decide to take on the responsibility my parents shirk, someone has to be there for him.

He walks nonchalantly down the steps of the courthouse.  He sees me waiting on the footpath, smirking he shrugs his shoulders.  “They had no case.”

Suddenly his friend Jake appears from nowhere, relief floods my brothers’ face as he turns away from me.  As he draws closer I notice how loose his clothes, once filled, now hanging on his emaciated form like a coat hanger.  His smile is thin and hungry and for the first time I notice a glint of desperation in his eyes as he turns to Jake.

“Hey man.  I thought you were in rehab?”

“Nah.  They kicked me out.”

“Denny said he’d be finished mixing that batch by eleven,” he said looking at his watch, “let’s go.”

I turned away from my brother, I don’t think he noticed, and as I walked toward the bus stop I tried to decide whether I should make pasta or tacos for dinner.