Mama Killed A Man

It was the middle of July when Ian Christopher Hurley got the call. The cacophonic bellows of a thousand restless fans filtered backstage as the five boys stood in a huddle and listened to Steve give the pre-show talk. It was 1996, a leap year, when Mad Cow disease broke out over the UK, when Dolly the Sheep was born, when Janet Jackson became the highest paid musician in history, and when Gene Kelly died. It was also the year my father got a phone call from a contact who knew where my mother was hiding. It was the year Skol broke up and the year their drummer became a cripple. It was the year I started
kindergarten. I was four years old.

The minute he picked up the phone my father knew his life was about to change. Upon hearing of my mother’s location all thoughts of the show were abandoned and he would’ve left the venue, bailed on the show, if Matt hadn’t stopped him. Matt pushed him on stage and
gave him a talking to that glued his butt to the stool.

The set was still a disaster; as much as he tried, he just couldn’t focus. He forgot the track order, he mixed up verses, he missed his drum solo and he failed to provide the back-up vocals all together. Maybe if he had known it would be his last show, he might have played it differently.

Karla Cross knew he was in town, which is why she was renting a room above a butcher’s shop in the city. So when my father showed up there at two am, assaulted by torrential storm and chilled to the bone, she didn’t let him in. I did. The man behind the door told me he was my daddy, and I unlocked the door and let him in while my mother wasn’t looking. He picked me up and hugged me close and breathed in the lavender scent of my baby skin that he thought he had lost forever.

“I couldn’t let you go,” he said softly, lips quavering. “She told me to, but I just couldn’t.”

And that was when she pushed him.

“I slipped, and it was wet and she tried to grab me, but she was holding you, and you were crying and crying and-“

He fell.

He fell and they all fell with him. Matt and Steve and Mark and Karl and Louise and Graeme and thousands of devoted fans all over the world fell with him that night.

It was like the time Katie Loraine and I found a baby bird in her backyard. It was hopping about and flapping its fluffy wings and chirruping at its parents as they swooped and squawked from above. We had it trapped in a Timberland shoe box by the time Katie’s mum came home. She told us to put it back, because it wasn’t in any real danger. All that hopping and flapping and fussing was how it was learning how to fly.

A week later the bird was dead. Katie found it floating in a bucket of water that had accumulated during a storm a few nights before. She said it must have smelled the water, hopped onto the rim, slipped in and drowned. It was a tiny little slip, a small accident that could have so easily been avoided if the bucket had been emptied, or if Katie’s mum had brought it inside, or if the bird hadn’t come looking. But none of those things had happened and the bird had died.

Katie and I buried the bird in her backyard next to a bed of tulips. We said a few words, and cried a little, and went inside to play Super Mario.

Back to Arizona, Skol attended a small press conference, they had their last meet and greet, they met with lawyers and dealt out their earnings; they auctioned off their tour bus and gave the proceeds to the Red Cross. They told everyone Klaus had slipped. No one had pushed him- that was just a rumour. It was an accident that couldn’t have been avoided.

Except that it could have been. My mother had pushed him long before the accident one night in the middle of July. They should have seen it coming. She’d been pushing him away from me for years, and if she hadn’t he wouldn’t have had a reason to come looking. That push on the sixteenth of July, 1996, that was just what got him over the edge.

“Don’t be angry with her, Bambi,” my father said, his hand moving to the small of my back. “She just wanted to protect you.”

“I know,” I said. It was a struggle for me to admit it. I wanted someone to blame for this, and I’d been blaming my mother for so long it had rendered itself as just another of my bad habits, like picking at scabs and talking in my sleep. It was why I found it hard to think rationally anymore.

What I didn’t understand though, was how she didn’t give in. Even after crippling my father, ruining his career and breaking up Skol, she wouldn’t let him see me. She probably wasn’t even sorry.

“Her main concern was you, Amber, you have to remember that,” my father said quietly. “She didn’t want you mixed up in this world, so open to the public eye. She got so much trouble while she was with me, from fans and the press. She didn’t want you going through that too.”

“Did you ever see her again?”

He nodded, twisting his lips to the side in a solemn grimace.

“When?”

He was reluctant to tell me. I knew because though his eyes were open, he wasn’t looking at anything, he wasn’t focused. He was fighting a mental battle with himself.

“It was a few years later, she came asking for money,” he said slowly. “I’d been trying to send you some for years but she always rejected it. She said she wanted to send you to a private school because you were getting really good at the cello.”

My breath caught in my throat as I put it all together.

“Even then, she only took the bare minimum. I told her your school fees would increase as you got older, and that she should take more, but she refused.” He looked away, “She worked so hard to keep you in that school.”

My eyes stung as I struggled to hold everything back; an immense wave of emotion washed in and tightened my lungs.

“She told me she got a promotion and was going to Canberra.” My voice was blocked and throaty. I tucked my knees beneath my chest as my father put his arm around my rigid body, struggling to swallow the clog in my windpipe.

“Brookie, get her some tissues please.”

She had been standing in the doorway, so quietly; I wondered how long she had been there.

Gently releasing myself from his grasp, I kissed my father softly on the head and left the room before she could get back. I didn’t want her to see me like this, and I most certainly didn’t want her involved, even if she was just getting me some tissues. She wasn’t family; she wasn’t even my friend, so she didn’t get to know what was wrong with my life. My face boiled as I strode swiftly down the hallway. With my head down and my eyes fixed to my feet, it was no wonder I walked right into him. I jumped and stumbled back, muttering an apology.

“You didn’t tell me your mother had passed away,” he said dejectedly.

I looked at him for a while, taking in his faceless expression. Then I shrugged and moved past him to my room.