Reading Lessons​​
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The morning sun’s shining straight at the tomatoes like it’s taking full aim; two of them are perfectly ripe and ready to go. They’ll be good for dinner tonight: some rice, garlic, toss in some coriander seeds. I’m kneeling by a patch of dirt, turning the soil and picking out the weeds that also like this particular strip of sunshine when the screen door squeaks. The old man is at the top step in his PJs and those grungy old slippers. He sees me. Wouldn’t expect me out here—I’m usually asleep at this time of day. I imagine Roy tells his mates down the Diggers that his hippie boarder is an odd one. For a second I wonder if he wishes he hadn’t opened the door. But he’s got momentum and there’s no turning back. I nod and don’t say anything, giving him a chance to just shuffle on past. He’s on his way to the clothesline to grab a pair of undies—five saggy pairs hang from wooden pegs.
“Morning, Simon” he coughs.
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“Yeah,” I say. “Nice morning.”
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I turn back to the tomatoes, expecting him to keep on moving towards those big old baggy Y-fronts but he stops.
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“They’re beauties,” he says.
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It takes me a beat to realise he’s not talking about the undies.
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“Sure are,” I say, and I feel my cheeks flaring. Why can’t I take a compliment? It’s not even for me, it’s for the bloody tomatoes! I pretend to be busy with the spade, keeping my back turned to him.
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He coughs again, to clear the morning phlegm or clear the air, and I wait for my face to cool so I can turn around and be friendly. His slippers scuff along the concrete path that runs from the bottom step to the old metal Hills Hoist. He cranks the handle to bring the line down and I can hear the effort in it—both for him and for the rusted mechanism. My face has calmed, and I get up off my knees.
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“I can help you bring them in if you wait a sec. Just gotta wash my hands first.” They’re covered in brown earth, which I hold up as proof.
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“Nah, ’sorright. Only need the one pair,” he says, tucking the undies under his arm as he starts his slow shuffle back to the house.
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“Roy, wait.” I twist one of the ripe tomatoes from its stalk and hold it out as an offering.
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I smile. “Here.” If only it was always this easy.
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His eyes are sunken and rheumy but they’re warm too as he looks at me, a little surprised.
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“Ta. Bonza. Lovely,” he says, as if he’s trying to find the right word but none of them can quite say what he means.
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“Let me know what it’s like,” I say. “If it tastes good.” And I kneel back down to tend to the plot so he doesn’t have to say anything more.
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He shuffles past.
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“I’ll save it for lunch,” he says. “Ta. Bonza. Lovely,” he repeats.
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It was the longest exchange between us since I’d moved in.
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Four months earlier I’d put up a Room Wanted ad at the library—one of those notices where the bottom of the page has tear-off pieces with your phone number. The notices are each stories in their own right. Themes of optimism, desperation, and a fair bit of misrepresentation. The bottom strips make me think of rows of grinning mouths with missing teeth.
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Room Wanted. Male (age 26). Night/shift worker. Non-
smoker, drug-free, friendly. Available to move in
immediately. Budget $200 per week.
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I wrote my phone number out eight times along the bottom of the page, snipping the edges carefully to show I’m tidy. I moved the other notices around on the board making sure I wasn’t covering anyone else’s note—our pleas to the universe are all equally valid.
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Then I went to pick out some books to get me through the next few weeks of work. Of course, I ended up nose-in-a-book on one of the reading chairs, and a few hours passed before I lifted my head. That’s when I saw the old man.
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He was working his way through the pages on the noticeboard, running a finger along the text like a six-year-old who’s just learning to read. He wore a pair of trackies and a crumpled long-sleeved shirt buttoned up all the way, which made me think he’d dressed up for the occasion. On his feet were a pair of tartan slippers looking worse for wear—had he forgotten to change his shoes or did he just not care what other people think? I hoped it was the latter. I’m working on that; maybe I’ll get there by the time I’m his age.
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Then he came to my message. He did that thing with his finger all the way to the end then went back to the beginning and started over again. Took him forever. Then he tore off a flap and held the piece of paper between his fingers, his mouth moving as he read the numbers. He put the piece of paper into his shirt pocket and went into the men’s toilets.
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Geez, I wondered, is he gonna call me from the loo?
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He didn’t, thank god.
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* * *
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I’m Roy, I tell the man at the desk, and he says, I’m Fitz, how can I help you Roy? I say, I’m seventy-five years old Fitz and I want to practice my reading and writing. I don’t tell him I used to know how before Long Tan but they sent me home on medical discharge and since then the words don’t sit right in my head. Fitz says, You’ve come to the right place, mate, lots of people come here to read. He points to people sitting in chairs reading books and newspapers like the place is their loungeroom. I say, What about people who want to learn how to read? Fitz points to tables around the library where people are sitting together leaning over books. Fitz says, They’re learning to read or to speak English or they’re getting help with their studies. I say, That’s good, do you reckon someone can help me? Fitz says, Look on the noticeboard, people put up notices. And he points to a wall with lots of pages all over it and says, Take your pick. So I say, Thanks, and I go take a look. What I don’t say to Fitz is I can’t read words anymore so I how do I know which one to pick? I spend a long time choosing. There’s one that has no bits torn off yet. I can read numbers and it looks like a good rate: $200 to learn to read and write that sounds about right. I take one of the pieces of paper and put it in my pocket so I can think about it. When I come out of the loos I take the whole page off the wall. I move the other pieces of paper around on the board—you want to make sure everyone gets a fair go.
* * *
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My notice covered all three themes: I was optimistic I’d find somewhere to stay; I was desperate to find somewhere to stay; and to be honest, I was misrepresenting myself—true, I don’t smoke or use drugs, but it’s a stretch to call me friendly. I try to be, but I’m not good at speaking to people. In fact, if I can avoid it, I do.
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I’d been staying at Val’s, kipping on his lounge. Val from work. I’m the one he calls on when he needs someone to cover his shift. After Laila and I split up, I called Val to ask if he knew of anyone looking for a flat mate because Laila and I had split up and I had a week to get out of the apartment. “Why’d you wait this long, Simon? She’s a fucking mental-case,” Val had said. “Bit of a looker, though. That why you stuck around so long?”
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Because I thought I loved her. I thought my being there helped. Or it might have had something to do with the way she coiled in on herself as she slept and how her hair splayed out onto my side of the bed, which— I now realise—I misread as hope. Those last months were all about waiting. Was this another downward spiral or was she plateauing? Maybe the good weather would help, with spring on the way?
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I didn’t tell Val about Laila’s latest episode. I didn’t tell him about finding her in the bathtub, that magnificent hair fanned out over the surface of the crimson-tinted bathwater. How the razor blade trapped in her hair made me think about all the crap in the ocean and that awful plastic island I’ve read about that makes me feel so defeated. How I moved in slow motion, checking her pulse then walking to the living room to get my phone to dial 000.
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I didn’t tell Val that Laila ended up in hospital. The day she was discharged she told me she was moving back to Perth, “to get my head straightened out.” Told me it was over with us, that it had been coming for ages. “You spend your life with losers, Simon. We walk all over you and you let us. Get a life. Get out of mine.”
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I was starting to think Laila’s right.
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Val had offered his sofa. “Friday week,” he said. “Shona’s back from the Gold Coast next Friday, and you gotta be out by then. She’ll crack a fit if she finds out I let one of my mates stay over.” Most weeks I end up covering one of Val’s shifts because he’s still drunk or hungover from the night before. From the stories Val tells me, his mates are a rowdy pack of pissheads.
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It’s nice he called me “one of his mates,” though I think it’s a stretch.
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One day to go before I’m out on my arse, and I’m crashed out on Val’s sofa in the middle of the day when my phone buzzes. Val’s the only one who calls me these days. I wouldn’t put it past him to call my phone to ask me to cover his shift even if I was only in the next room.
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“Yeah, it’s Simon,” I say. Thinking but not saying, “For fuck’s sake, Val.”
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“Traynor,” croaks a voice on the line. “Roy Traynor.”
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Wrong number maybe.
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“Do I know you?” I ask.
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“The library,” he says. Then a round of coughing.
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I do a mental scan of the books I’ve got out on loan and whether they might be overdue. I’m always careful to return my books on time. I can’t match the voice to anyone who works behind the desk. My mind searches hard to place him.
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Slipper-dunny guy? He’s old. Also he wasn’t creepy (he didn’t call me from the toilet); and he looked like he was trying hard to make sense of things. I hadn’t thought of him since.
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“You’ve got a room?” I ask, trying to tamp down the eagerness in my voice.
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“A room?” he repeats.
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“Yeah, I put up an ad in the library. Are you calling about that? I’m looking for a room.” I’m doing that thing I do when I’m nervous, trying to say everything before the other person loses interest or senses my shyness. “I can pay two hundred bucks a week. I’m not home most nights, because I work—I look after people—and I sleep during the day. So I’m no bother. Quiet. Easy-going.” Shy as shit and, according to my ex-girlfriend, I spend my life with losers…so maybe you want to reconsider before inviting me into your life? “Spend my spare time reading mostly.” Burying myself in other people’s stories so I don’t have to live my own. “I’m no trouble.”
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“Yeah, I’ve got a room,” he says. He speaks slowly, like he’s only just realising why he called me. “Back of the house. Sitting there empty. There’s a bed, a dresser, a cupboard. Might as well be used by someone who needs it. Whaddya reckon?”
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Geez, he doesn’t know me from a bar of soap. Not very picky.
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I haven’t even asked where it is.
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“Clargo St.” he says, “couple of blocks down from the station.” I know Clargo St—rows of single-storey terrace houses, some in better shape than others. It’s a safe bet Roy’s house is one of the run-down ones, weeds pushing up concrete in a tiny front yard.
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“Thanks Mr. Traynor. Sounds great.”
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“You’re not expecting anything fancy are ya?” he says. “None of this Mr. Traynor carry on. I’m just Roy. You can stop by this arvo and check it out.”
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And that’s how I find myself living in Roy’s back room, an enclosed verandah with a single bed and a view of the backyard: a small square of faded grass growing around the Hills Hoist centrepiece, where the morning sun hits a tiny patch of dirt at just the right angle to grow two perfect tomatoes.
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* * *
I tell him, Used to be my room. When I was a kid, Lived here all my life. Came back from Nam and moved right back in. Until Mum died and I took the front room. First time someone else is staying there. Simon says, So two hundred bucks a week? I don’t need his money, I’ve got my war pension, but he seems to expect I’ll take something, so I say, Nah, just give me a hundred. His face goes all red and it looks like he’s gonna cry and I think, jesus, he’s had it rough. Anyway I give him the key to the back door because I’ve only got the two—one for the front and one for the back. I say he can have the bathroom out back to himself, there’s another inside that I use, and he says, Sounds good, and that he’ll just stick to his room, that he usually cooks his tea at the community house where he works nights, but he’ll use the kitchen to make his breakfast if that’s all right. I think, fair enough, keeps to himself. I don’t mention about the reading and the writing yet. That was plenty enough for us to both wrap our heads round for now. I say, When are ya gonna move in? and he says, Tomorrow, is that okay? I tell him that I might be down the Diggers cause Friday’s bingo, so he can just let himself in, and he says, Cheers, I don’t have much stuff. And that’s that.
* * *
Roy and I barely see each other. I can’t help but think that guys of his generation view skinny guys with ponytails with a degree of suspicion. That, and the strange hours I keep—maybe he’s got some questions about my lifestyle. If he only knew; I work, go to the library, read, and sleep. That’s pretty much it. Life with Laila wasn’t too different—working, reading, sleeping. That, and talking her down, making her meals, tiptoeing around her moods. Lately I’d been reading more and more. Escaping. At Roy’s, I come and go through the back door. I use the kitchen in the mornings while he’s still asleep, cooking up my oatmeal on the ancient gas stove, cleaning up after myself. There’s an old boomerang-patterned Formica table with two chairs in the corner of the room—each Friday morning I leave five twenty-dollar bills on the table with a handwritten note: Thanks, Roy, from Simon. The next morning the note’s always gone.
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A couple of days after moving in, I’m coming down Clargo St on my way home from work and two kids have set up a table on the footpath with a sign written in texta: Tomotoe and Basil plants for sale. $2. School holiday entrepreneurs selling plastic pots of dirt with straggly stems sticking out of them.
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“Tom-oh-toes!” I say, “I’d give an arm and a leg for some tom-oh-toe soup right now.” My lame attempt at a joke falls flat. The kids roll their eyes at each other. Kids can land withering scorn with absolute precision—I learned that firsthand in high school.
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“Two bucks,” says the girl, shoving a sad-looking specimen at me.
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I feel a familiar heat in my cheeks. I figure the quickest way to end the conversation is to take the plant and get going. I pull a five dollar note out of my pocket.
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“Three for five bucks, mix and match,” says the boy, eager to offload stock.
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“It’s fine,” I say, taking the pot. “Keep the change.” What a waste of money.
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The plant needs care if it’s going to survive. The stalk, an unconvincing shade of mottled green, is tied to a twig with string to stop it from drooping over itself. There are only four leaves, one of them dark and spongy, nearly dead. I should just chuck it in the bin. But there’s still some life in it. Laila’s voice comes into my head: “You should let things die when they’re meant to, Simon.” She told me my mum would’ve hated knowing I kept her alive so long. With nothing to show but a big fat debt to the nursing home.
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I write a note to Roy and leave it on the kitchen table:
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Roy, if it’s okay with you, I’m going to try to grow a plant in the yard
under my window. I’m not a gardener but it’s worth a shot. Let me
know if you have any objections. Thanks, Simon.
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I check the kitchen table the next morning. Note’s gone but no reply. I wait another day. In the end I stick the plant in the ground anyway.
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About a week later, I wake up one late afternoon and see him out at the line, bringing in his washing. The sky’s dark, a storm rolling in. He’s pulling some greying old t-shirts and his PJ pants off the line. He stops at the bottom of the stairs, clothes held in a bundle against his body. He’s looking at my plant, shaking his head. I let the slats of the venetian blind close so he doesn’t catch me looking.
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Maybe he thinks I’m growing weed. I quickly shower and dress, then go into the kitchen to tell him about the plant. Down the darkness of the hallway, the front door is closing. He’s gone out. I leave Roy a note:
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Hi Roy, just to let you know, it’s a tomato plant I’m growing. Some
kids up the street were selling them (probably dug up from their own
garden). I don’t hold out much hope but you never know. It seems
pretty happy where it is. Likes the sunshine. If we get any tomatoes
from it, we can split the spoils, hey? Hope you like tomatoes. The
arrangement is working well for me and suits my overnight shift
work. I try to not disturb you with my coming and going. But if you
have any concerns or if you want me to do anything differently just
let me know. Thanks for everything. Simon.
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The next morning the note’s gone. No response, of course. Did I really expect one? For a few days I try to catch Roy, to chat, but our paths never cross.
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* * *
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Mum’s roses grew under the window by my old bedroom. Summer nights I could smell them, but it made me too sad so I moved to the front room. Also I don’t know how to take care of things. In my head I tell Mum, sorry I let your rose bushes die, you’d have been cross at me. Maybe Simon can make something grow here in the sunshine. Simon said he looks after people so maybe he can look after plants too. I haven’t spoken to Simon about the reading lessons but he left me a note so I make a start. He leaves money out every week, five twenties. I’d never noticed before but the lady on the one with the wattle and the kookaburras looks a bit like Mum if she lived in the olden times and before she got all skinny and forgot my name. On the other side there’s a drawing of a man and a De Havilland 50 aircraft, and there are two other designs—one with the same lady and an old boat and the other one with a camel on it too. They’re nice to look at, like art. I know it’s money, not art, but I like the drawings.
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* * *
I work, I sleep, I read. My tomato plant is doing well, like it just needed a place to put down its roots and grow towards the sun. I borrow a book from the library about vegetables, and I buy a small hand trowel from the hardware store. I prop up the stem with a sturdy stake. I buy some parsley to grow next to it—supposedly it’s a good companion plant to tomato vines. Most mornings after getting home from work I potter around outside a bit before getting some sleep. I clear any weeds growing in the plant bed and make an effort to clear away the bindi-eyes and clover competing with the buffalo grass around the clothesline.
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Each week I leave my weekly rent on the kitchen table; each week the money goes. Our paths never cross. I wonder if Roy’s avoiding me. He never answered my note. I start to worry that he’s working out how tell me to move out. I keep out of his way, not wanting to bump into him in case he tells me to move on. I need this room, this headspace, this garden.
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Laila sends me a text message, just once. Happy New Year from Perth. All’s fine. You’re a good man, Simon. I’m sorry you got caught up in my bullshit. Love, Laila.
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I text her back: Good to hear from you. You sound well. Planning on staying in Perth a while or coming back to Sydney? Her silence is her answer.
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And then one February day when the sun was shining and my tomato plant was thriving, Roy and I finally speak.
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Usually by ten in the morning I’m fast asleep. But it had been a rough night at work, with Connor and Big Cam getting into a fight over the TV remote. Connor, whose resting state is mild agitation, had downed a whole bottle of IGA cola, and was wired on caffeine. Big Cam is a gentle giant unless his temper gets up, and with Connor goading him, changing the channel then sitting on the bloody remote, Cam went into Hulk mode. He’d never hit me intentionally, I like to think, but he needed to get past me to land one on Connor. This went on for a whole episode of Australia’s Got Talent. Big Cam can’t stand pop music—it does something to his inner-wiring. As the music got poppier and the TV crowd got louder, Cam got angrier. My physical intervention wasn’t going to cut it, and in the end I had to call in for back up: Big Cam needed physical restraining, and Connor some medical sedation. Laila’s words were ringing in my ears:
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I’m still jacked up with the stress of it, not ready to sleep. I’m out there pottering in the garden when Roy steps out the back door.
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* * *
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I didn’t know if it was right to ask him about the reading lessons when I saw him this morning. Didn’t want him to feel like I’m cornering him. The tomato’s doing well, so I tell him that. I almost say, better than roses because you can eat tomatoes, but he might think I’m asking for one. Then he gives me one anyway. I try to remember the last time someone gave me something and I can’t. I think about how Simon looked when I told him the rent was a hundred a week not two hundred. Now I get how he was feeling: good and sad and embarrassed all at the same time. I don’t know what to say. It’s a beauty, this tomato. Toast’s on, I’ve sliced up the tomato, but I just need to lie down. Feeling a bit giddy.
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* * *
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I sleep. Deep, long, leaden. I wake in the dusky evening light, the verandah air thick with summer heat, a mozzie bothering my ear telling me to get up. I’ve slept too long. I message Val: Can you take my shift tonight? Short notice, I know. A few minutes later Val messages back: Was wondering if you’d ever ask. Will do. I owe you one or two. On a date? Whoop whoop. He’s right—I’ve never asked.
I go to the kitchen to rustle up a cuppa. The house is still. On the kitchen bench, slices of tomato sit on a plate, their edges curling in the heat. A couple of fat flies lift up from their feast and smack angrily at the window. Two pieces of toast sit cold in the toaster.
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Roy never leaves food out.
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“Roy?”
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No answer.
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I go into the living room. The last time I was in here was the afternoon I came to check out the house. The blinds are pulled closed. An old leather chair with cracked armrests and a matching footstool faces a television that looks older than me. I step into the shadowy narrow hallway. The bathroom door is open: a loo, a sink, yellow and black tiles and an old bathtub. No Roy. An empty room to the left—a big old cupboard, some boxes. And then the front room—must be Roy’s bedroom. The door’s closed.
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I knock.
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“Roy?”
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Nothing.
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God, what will he think if I come barging into his room? Might be getting dressed. Might be turned in for the night already.
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I knock again. Louder, this time.
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“Roy, it’s Simon. Just came to check on you. Can I open the door?”
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No response.
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So I open the door.
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* * *
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WORDS.
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All over the wall.
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Handwritten words in shaky script, pages stuck up everywhere like the noticeboard at the library on steroids. From ceiling to floor on all four walls, sticky-taped teetering rows of paper. I’m trying to make sense of what I see, but the words are swimming in front of my eyes.
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On the wall in front of me is a column of notes in my handwriting: Thanks, Roy, from Simon—the notes I left each week with the rent money. Next to them, another column of pages in shaking script: Thanks, Simon, from Roy, but a few times there are corrections to the text: Thanks, R̶o̶y̶ Simon, from S̶i̶m̶o̶n̶ Roy, the names crossed out and swapped over like he’d copied them then realised he wanted to say it differently. Covering the other half of the wall are twenty-dollar bills. All the rent money I’d paid these last four months: Mary Reibey and John Flynn, sternly eyeing me from the orange polymer wallpaper he’s created.
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On the wall to the right is the window, and at eye level is my note from the library. Above it and below, in the old man’s wobbly writing, are versions of my note copied over and over again, the phone number scrawled sideways on the bottom of each page, small rips delineating each tab, the pages leering at me with those crazy grins—he’s torn off some of the flaps scrawled with numbers and stuck them onto the wall underneath the window to create letters: S I M O N R O Y.
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There’s a bed to my left, a wooden headboard blocking my view of its contents, and all up the wall are more pieces of paper: halfway up, are the two notes I’d written Roy, and all around are pages with single words written over and over again, as if he is practicing spelling and can’t quite get it right.
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okay okay okay okay
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w̶i̶n̶d̶o̶d̶ windd̶ow window window
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gardener g̶a̶r̶d̶n̶e̶r̶ gardener g̶a̶r̶e̶d̶ gardner
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just just just just
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hey? hey? hey? hey?
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sunshine sunshine s̶u̶n̶s̶h̶i̶n̶n̶e̶ sunshine
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I take this all in before looking for Roy himself.
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He’s on the bed. The blankets are pushed away from him. His slippers are on his feet. He’s turned to the wall, legs drawn up to his chest. He’s cold to the touch.
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* * *
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Roy’s house is up for sale, proceeds to go to the Crown.
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I put up a new note at the library:
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Room Wanted. Male (age 27). Full-time student.
Non-smoker, drug-free. Quiet but friendly. Available
to move in immediately. Budget $200 per week.
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I write my phone number out eight times along the bottom of the page, snipping the edges carefully to show I’m tidy. I put in that I’m quiet, to temper any expectations. I move the other notices around on the board, making sure I’m not covering anyone else’s plea to the universe. I gave Roy a tomato once and he never got to eat it. He gave me a room, a patch of dirt, and some sunshine.
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​​By Eloise Keary
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Eloise Keary grew up in Sydney, Australia, in tumbledown beach houses filled with siblings, books, pets, and surfboards. She has worked as a producers’ assistant at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in Sydney and Perth, a copyright assistant at the BBC in London, an executive assistant at the World Bank in Washington DC, as a high school English and Drama teacher, and teaching astronomy in a travelling planetarium. She has an MA in Writing from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Eloise currently resides in Barbados, where she is working on her first novel.
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Social handle: @eloisekeary.bsky.social