Joyous and Moonbeam Read Online Free PDF

footy. I’d hear it sounding through the walls like happy elephants or cows, so I’d go in and ask, Why don’t you play in a band? And he’d say, Gotta pay the bills, sweetpea. On Monday morning he’d be back in hardware, talking up taps and toilets. He was never that successful but at least he was there. He was doing something and being someone. Whereas now, like I said … nothing.
    Two alternatives – they stay mute or they argue. Mum will say, Get a grip, and Dad will answer, Why, what’s the point? And I’ll think, It’s us, doofus, the point is us.
    So Mum works and Dad sits in a room if it’s raining or messes about outside with a bunch of never-to-be-finished projects if it’s not. And me? At first I stayed in my bedroom, playing music, reading
Harry Potter
, playing games on the computer, waiting for it to end. When it didn’t, I left my bedroom, left the house, came back as little as possible. I’d go to Kadie’s place until her mum got sick of me, then I’d go to Tara’s or Sog’s, anyone’s, even Patricia Handley’s once, that’s how desperate I was. Or I’d just walk around, because at least by walking I was gettingsomewhere different, and not at home with its left-off lights and silences that hung like velvet curtains and dust gathering on all the shiny surfaces. Because it’s not a home anymore, it’s just a house, with rooms that sound old and cold, and I crave more than these grey strangers who come and go and sleep in separate spaces.
    There were other things, too. I think Mum might’ve had an affair because I heard Dad ask, Who? And Mum said, Pete, from work. But there was nothing more, no anger, nothing. I snuck past the door for a look – they were in the kitchen – and he was sitting there, slumped and soft-looking, hands on his knees. She was waiting for the kettle to boil. They were so – still. It was scary. When I asked her about it she told me to mind my own business. We had this huge fight and, typically, she turned everything around to being about school. She said, I’ll look after the fees, Missy, you look after the results, that’s all you need to worry about. I thought, Eff-you, bitch. And that’s when the school stuff started, leading to That Night In The Library and all those things that Bracks lectures me about, cries about, whatever. The things that ended up taking me to the workshop and Room 12 with ol’ Joyous.
    Joy-ous. He’s this huge bloke, big as a truck, with hair the colour of cornflakes and boggley eyes and hands that don’t always do what he wants them to do. He’s got a rosy-coloured mouth that kinda falls off his face when hetalks in that funny way that he has. He makes pin-cushions all day, sounds like he has a totally screwy life at home, carries a bag of lollipops and sits placidly like a walrus on a beach. Strange then, for someone like him, someone so separated from the real world, to seem so gentle, seem so wise.

MARGARET
    Joyous, My Special
    More than once you have probably wondered why I decided to allow Sammy-K into our lives five years after the death of your dadda who was such a different man. It’s a fair question and one that I am often struggling to answer because I don’t always know myself. What I mean is, it’s hard to recall exactly how we came to be together, there’s just a feeling of the time or a set of moments that added up to make a whole.
    After Dadda’s accident I was very lost, very lonely, feeling very empty. I didn’t go out with anyone much, itwas just you and me on the Kinsville farm getting to know each other through sharing. You were a comfort to me and the only way I could defeat my sadness was to remember Thomas Bowen through you, you being the same tallness and with eyes deep and strong and snow hair and lovely smile that showed your inner beam reminding me of him. I suppose you and