The Time is Now Monica Sparrow Read online

  The Time is Now, Monica Sparrow

  The Time is Now,

  Monica Sparrow

  Matt Howard

  MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

  www.transitlounge.com.au

  Copyright ©Matt Howard

  First published 2019

  Transit Lounge Publishing

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Cover image: Stephen Mulcahey/Trevillion Images

  Author image: Christian Hagward

  Cover and book design: Peter Lo

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  A cataloguing entry is available from the

  National Library of Australia: trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN: 978-1-925760-25-5 (e-book)

  for

  Matt Wakeham

  Simon Proud

  Kate Farrar

  Michael Conway

  Kylie Anderson

  Josh Acton

  1

  Monica

  Her pulse raced the whole journey to this sterile community centre, to join a circle of ‘not-entirely-random’ strangers. It’d been a long time coming: seventeen years, three months, two days.

  The trek from the tube station saw Monica equivocate time and again, stopping mid-stride several times to attend to her non-ringing mobile, staring at the inactive screen as her mind deliberated. Last week she’d naively told Diane about her intentions and, true to recent form, Diane had rallied, ‘Be sure not to rush into anything Monica!’ Her sister’s preferred tongue, sarcasm. Diane was fluent.

  People passed Monica by, convinced she was reading a text, or more likely they gave her no mind at all. She’d noticed there was less London strutting on the pavements of late, more brisk dashing. The turn of seasons.

  The impending descent into yet another winter was upon them already.

  Something in Monica, something she could not yet name, pushed her on and she scuttled up the stairs and followed another malingerer into the only room with lights on.

  Monica had done her best to give due attention to each recounting that preceded hers. First up was the good-looking man who’d inadvertently and forever knocked out his best mate while sparring during their first and only semester at uni, then the barely adult jaywalker who’d absentmindedly crossed despite the red man, only to be followed by a random toddler, briefly ignored by its parents, who never made it to the other side. Both were bested, if that could be possible, by the old lady who’d seen one of the London tube bombers that very morning and had failed to say anything. The old lady was still frozen, these years later, unable to fathom how she might ever redeem herself; so many lives lost.

  Given the nod, Monica had steeled herself, compelling her chin upwards. Don’t blather, she reminded herself. And Monica began the story of how she had killed her adored younger brother, Caleb. He had just turned eighteen.

  2

  Caleb

  The hushed circle waited on the newcomer. It had been a while since they had not known what to expect; most here were regulars – retelling their stories like the ancient mariner. Monica rallied.

  ‘Caleb, my little brother, met me for our own special celebratory dinner a week after his actual eighteenth-birthday party.’

  Monica tried not to think as she spoke, she needed to get through this.

  ‘Once we found a table at the pub’s bistro we rehashed our recollections of his party, one more time. Caleb loved my present, a peculiar-looking puppy that he decided to name Freaky. I caught our mother and father glowing with pride during Caleb’s speech. I reckon they viewed us three – we have an older sister, Diane – as having met both of their self-imposed KPIs.’

  Monica, aware that she was now talking to the floor, took a quick look at the faces she’d been avoiding. It appeared to her that she may have lost the group with the use of that last term.

  ‘We were happy, and we were healthy.’

  ‘Caleb, as was his way, entertained me throughout dinner, his exuberance aided I suspect by a discreet joint. And when he was not deflecting the gaze of most of the females in the bistro, he was making me laugh with tales like presenting Freaky to the local vet for a once over, only for the vet to initially assume the weird looking creature to be a cat.’

  Monica stopped at this point. She had surprised herself by going for a laugh – she just wanted them to appreciate how funny Caleb was.

  Those gathered, thought this was the moment she’d inevitably tear up. They’d been through this many times. Not yet, Monica determined, and continued.

  ‘Caleb polished off his standard two desserts before scooting off to his best mate Dipesh’s eighteenth, which was kicking off at a pub just blocks away. Without Caleb to navigate the car trip home, I decided the easiest way to get home from Soho was to reverse the steps Caleb had earlier jotted down on a slip of paper.’

  Monica, again, looked up. She made eye contact with the old lady of the tube story. ‘You know, starting at the last step, reversing the directions and ending up home.’ The old lady nodded uh-huh.

  ‘Some flashing lights caught me unawares – the intersection traffic signals had apparently malfunctioned – and I’ve never been that great with the whole left and right thing. I remember slowing so I could think.’

  None of the dozen or so assembled seemed to Monica to be entirely immersed. Not a good sign for a prospective author. Monica often veered off course in her storytelling, yet despite being cognisant of that tendency she decided, in that moment, to jump forward a decade and reference the start of her mother’s decline, and much more recently her father’s sudden departure.

  ‘Oh, no, not dead! He didn’t depart depart.’

  They were now well confused.

  ‘He left my mother for another woman, younger, who lives just a few streets away from her.’ Looking across the circle, Monica took the jaywalker into her confidence with a targeted flicker of a smile, ‘And then lumbering, my sister’s exact word, our discarded family with his surplus-to-requirements stepson, a young man that Diane dismissively labelled “The Waif ”, otherwise known as Jamie.’

  She’d rambled. This was meant to be about Caleb, her actual brother. Caleb, who was long gone before any of this other stuff. Caleb, who had precipitated all this other stuff.

  The boxer looked at Monica as if to say, Is this it?

  She knew she should hasten things. However. Just one more anecdote was determined to come out. Monica took the opportunity to explain her brother’s quirky name, telling the group how her father had taken to calling his only son by his middle name, Caleb, when he was about nine. It had eventually held, leaving Caleb Sparrow with a name only he could get away with.

  Monica was losing them, this captive audience. She’d wanted to include as much background as possible, if only to emphasise the gravity of it all. But it was habit, too; Monica had long spurned the less-is-more mantra. She sighed at her folly and pressed on to the essentials. These haunted folks understood gravity already.

  Cut to the chase. Here goes.

  ‘A nurse was standing near the bed when I woke.’

  ‘The police have gone,’ the nurse said. ‘You were only point zero three.’

  ‘It started to come back to me and I asked after the person or people in the car that had rammed me. I was scared they may have not been as lucky as me.’

  ‘The other driver is fine,’ the nurse said. ‘Nothing serious. I think we should wait for your family to return before we update you about your passenger.’

  ‘I had no idea who she meant.’

  Monica had not intended to present the story in such a way, as if she was plotting out another novel. She wasn’t here to entertain! Monica wanted answers to the what ifs.

  ‘Had zero three been the reason I did not see Caleb passed out in a stoned slumber on my back seat? Why couldn’t he have gone straight to Dipesh’s party? Why had I not noticed that my car was already unlocked? And why had I ever made Caleb the custodian of my spare car key?’

  The room was dead silent. This lot had no answers.

  3

  Jamie

  Monica and Jamie took morning walks whenever either needed it. So, most days.

  If anyone would be open to hearing about Monica’s previous evening, it would be Jamie. Certainly not Diane. Could it be that this recently acquired kid-brother, whom she’d abruptly inherited mere months back, might just be enough reason to sort her shit out after all these years?

  ‘So, do you feel better now that you’ve done it?’ Jamie asked Monica.

  ‘I’m not sure yet, maybe I have to go a few more times to really get some value out of it. Most everyone there were regulars.’

  ‘So, it’s not working for them?’ Jamie asked.

  The question was unloaded. Jamie was simply curious.

  ‘I guess not,’ Monica conceded.

  They passed the falafel place on Neasden Lane where Jamie worked part time. It was too early for it to be open and, as they approached, Monica could see an old man, bent like a shepherd’s crook, moving toward the baker’s tray of recently delivered bread that was awaiting retrieval by shop staff.

  Jamie said shush and they stopped to watch. The homeless man opened one of the packs of flatbreads and removed two pieces before re-clipping the bag.


  ‘He takes just what he needs,’ Jamie whispered.

  ‘You’ve seen this happen before?’ Monica asked.

  ‘He’s one of our regulars,’ Jamie said proudly.

  Monica looked at her stepbrother. He was the sort of person others rarely noticed – the silent dude on the tube or slipping along the street; the little guy relegated to the middle of the bench seat of a tradesman’s van. Unbothered by shop assistants, lost in a hoodie, permanently wearing the expression of someone who’s just been reprimanded.

  Jamie continued to regard the old man in silence and Monica smiled. A few birds twittered nearby. It was if they were chatting, not to each other, but to Jamie, for the minute he acknowledged them with a cursory glance they desisted, satisfied. Monica looked at her stepbrother, exactly what planet are you from?

  Monica had only once dropped by the falafel place when Jamie was rostered on. Before he’d had a chance to see her she’d observed him being harangued by the manager as he mopped up a kebab spill. The manager was angrily pointing out every final skerrick of lettuce-tomato-onion that had splayed across the tiles and under the counter. Monica had wanted to dunk the manager’s face into the hummus tub. She left before Jamie saw her. Recently, without thinking, she’d told this story to Diane.

  ‘That’s the “job”,’ her sister had remarked, as always decorating the word, whenever it applied to Jamie, with air-scraping fingers. As if he were not real, just an illusion. Not a replacement brother, not their brother at all.

  ‘I think I’ll head this way,’ Monica said to Jamie.

  ‘Left,’ Jamie noted.

  ‘Left.’

  Only he could correct her on the left–right divide. If anyone else tried it, Monica would become teary and flustered.

  ‘See you at Mother’s at midday,’ Monica reminded him, hoping he would not try and get out of it.

  ‘Your mother’s,’ Jamie clarified.

  ‘Yes.’ Monica kicked herself. ‘You know the address?’

  ‘Yep, I reckon I know which house it is.’

  4

  Diane

  The previous Thursday, Monica’s usual routine of full days devoted to writing had been compromised by her sister Diane’s announcement that she would be calling by. To compensate, despite it still being quite dark, Monica made a particularly early start; she had something important to do.

  Moving quickly in a zigzag path through the maze within her small house, Monica made her away to the only relatively clear space: her writing nook in the front window. She was no longer only propelled by the unlikely possibility that one day she might be signed up by a real publisher. No, Monica also got to work because she wanted to see where her story was going.

  Fortunately, Monica had the bulk of the day to continue with her story before the inescapable gloom of her sister’s visit. Diane (rarely at her best in the morning) had plumped for afternoon tea.

  At this point, before the first strike of the keyboard, Monica always thought of Caleb. This is for you, little brother.

  Diane played at walking the lines created by the intersecting slabs of concrete forming the platform at Green Park. Even though this was the closest tube station to her husband Jacob’s office, she was unconcerned that any of his colleagues might see her ever so slightly the worse for wear. Nobody senior enough to matter would use public transport, let alone be travelling this time of day. She wavered slightly and pretended it was because of her spindly footwear. Summer was receding quickly this year; before long it would be boots every day.

  Monica nipped into the kitchen. On the fridge, above the certificate she’d received for her ongoing support of a meerkat at London Zoo and the photo of her sponsored teenager in Uganda, were pictures of Caleb. And one of her stepbrother, Jamie. In the moment before she removed them from sight for the duration of Diane’s visit, the thought that these two faces somehow sat well together briefly flickered through Monica’s mind. In reality, they’d never met. Never even sighted each other.

  Monica had already shredded and disposed of the flyer regarding the upcoming meeting of the group she’d avoided all these years. If anyone would not be open to hearing about Monica’s upcoming session, it would be Diane.

  A year back Jacob had ribbed his wife about her distaste for public transport and, feeling contrary, Diane had immediately purchased an Oyster card. Unfortunately for Diane, Jacob – still trying to land his point – had taken to regularly checking the card’s balance, so here she was yet again, riding the rails in heels.

  After alighting at Neasden tube Diane trekked towards her sister’s place, which was only a few blocks away from the house in which they all once lived, now empty except for Mother. The final segment was Uber-worthy, however Diane thought it smart to freshen up, take some air.

  An age ago, Diane had learned Neasden had infamously been dubbed the ‘loneliest village in London’. It had seemed ridiculous back then. She’d cut short her Green Park session for this catch-up. Hopefully Monica would not ask what she’d been up to, only to have Diane be forced to lie to her again.

  Outside Monica’s home, Diane, anticipating the state of the place within, paused. From out the front the virgin visitor would have no idea of the chaos waiting inside. A neat brick and tile sociopath of a dwelling was the way Diane thought of it, the façade’s outward calm belying internal anarchy.

  Diane breathed in then out, checking her breath against the back of her hand. Was she now immune to the smell of vodka? She hoped that it would be just the two of them, not Mother and certainly not Jamie, lazing in the Jamie-sized divot in his go-to sofa. Diane set her mind to the purpose of the visit.

  Monica heard her sister’s unmistakable staccato footsteps approaching the front door. Diane did not so much push the doorbell as stab it.

  Once inside Monica pointed out a hastily cleared sofa, yet Diane remained frozen, one elegant eyebrow raised in disdain as her eyes cast about the teetering stacks.

  Eventually Diane deigned to enter the sitting room, shoving a pile of magazines aside to clear a space on the wrong sofa, not the one Monica had mentally assigned her. Diane looked like she wanted to slap her sister, but managed to confine herself to observing, ‘It’s as if you live in the club lounge at a busy airport and the cleaners have been on strike for a year.’

  ‘I clean.’

  ‘Okay, I will concede it is clean,’ Diane said, adding, ‘How you manage that I have no idea.’ Almost immediately she noticed the only clear space on the mantelpiece, as she did on each of her increasingly infrequent visits. I’m not an idiot, Diane felt like snarling. She’d arrived unannounced a year or so ago, and briefly caught sight of that photograph Father had taken of the three of them with Mother, before Monica, following her gaze, clumsily shoved it behind a box of who knows what.

  ‘I want us to get together more often …’ Diane began, and Monica momentarily hoped that might be the entirety of her sister’s announcement; that it might be proviso-free.

  ‘… so you, Mother and I can plan my fortieth.’

  ‘Sure,’ Monica said.

  ‘Not here.’ Diane shuddered theatrically.

  ‘Sure,’ Monica said.

  ‘We can take turns to choose a venue; we’ll do lunches,’ Diane decreed. ‘You should nominate a café. Anywhere but here.’

  ‘Sure,’ Monica said.

  ‘And Jamie free.’

  Monica ignored that.

  Business done and dusted, Diane returned to her critical assessment of Monica’s home.

  ‘Where do you write these days?’ she asked.

  Monica pointed towards the small table pushed against the front window. Its position allowed her to look upon the outside world and ignore all else.

  ‘You obviously haven’t done any writing recently,’ Diane observed the paraphernalia around the keyboard.

  ‘I write every day. I wrote this morning.’

  ‘Are you still trying to get your books published? I mean properly published?’

  ‘Nowadays you really need to be a celebrity or have a huge social media following or some sort of “buzz”,’ Monica replied.