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able to summarise an actor’s career.
    I heard my grandfather get up and go outside – he spent almost every waking hour of his life in his garage tinkering away with this machine or that, having never been able to let go of his engineering career. Once Pa was safely out of earshot, I heard love-making sounds coming from my mother’s room next door, the same as last night, only louder. I stopped what I was doing momentarily and listened. It sounded well rehearsed, just like it did on the silver screen, as choreographed a scene as any with Astaire and Kelly had been. My mother was moaning like a puppy, high-pitched, rhythmic beats that got higher in timbre the longer Steve pounded into her.
    â€˜It’s all make-believe,’ Mum once said to me. ‘Those two actors up there don’t really love each other, they’re not really touching each other as husband and wife do.’
    â€˜But sometimes the actors fall in love in real life too,’ I’d retorted, feeling rather clever. ‘So they must have felt something real while they were acting.’
    â€˜It’s hard to explain,’ she said, ‘but sometimes when you pretend, it feels real. Like how you might pretend to be on a TV show when you cook, sometimes, and you can almost see the camera focused on you, and you become someone else and you know all the right things to say about the food. You know how you do that?’
    â€˜I guess,’ I said, though I couldn’t really make the connection.
    When the funny breathing stopped – and it was pretty comical when you actually listened to the strange sounds grown-ups sometimes made – I heard my mother and Steve make their way into the bathroom. They drew a bath and climbed in together; I heard a splashing sound and Mum laughing, perhaps at the way the water overflowed the edge. They stayed in that bath for a ridiculously long time, talking a lot (though I could not quite hear what they were saying).
    Eventually it came time for Mum to get ready for her day job, so she said goodbye to Steve and told him to close the door behind him when he left. I sat motionless, listening to Steve open and close cupboards and drawers in my mother’s room then jump around on the bed a bit. If Steve dared come into my room I would run at him like a cornered lion and pounce, finding strength I never knew I had to protect my mother’s dignity. He probably didn’t even like her, and then I, once again, would be the one to help wipe away her tears. I wonder why this time, she would say, or I knew it the second I met him. Another time she had asked, What is wrong with me? and I had answered, Not a single thing in the world, my Lana Turner, you are as perfect as any screen goddess who ever lived. And she said, That’s not what they say , throwing a thumb over her left shoulder at a past of disappointing men united against her. On days like these I would pray to invisible gods, begging to keep her away from one of her spirals.
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    When Mum got home from the butcher shop later that day she asked: ‘Didn’t you go to school today, Tom?’ To my surprise, there was disappointment and irritation in her voice.
    I was still at my desk, in my pyjamas, flicking through my A–C shoebox looking for the right card. I never tried to hide my truancy from my mother. She was pretty cool when it came to writing me a note the following day, sometimes enjoying the game of what excuse to come up with.
    â€˜It wasn’t my fault, honest it wasn’t, Mum,’ I said, making my voice sound as infantile as I could.
    â€˜Have you even bathed?’
    â€˜No . . . but I got heaps done, Mum. You bought me all these things for my birthday and, well, I couldn’t sleep last night and then there was just so much for me to do I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate at school, no way.’
    â€˜So I heard you met Steve this