It was comical, the sight of him getting into that sports car, a 1979 MGB convertible. Then, strapped into his seat, he looked as apprehensive as the first astronaut.
Now I think it was a brave attempt, an ingenious act in total defiance of himself and the voices within him intent on categorizing him. Dad in that sports car was a man reinventing himself from the outside in. A rebirth doomed to miscarriage.
“Are you coming?”
“Where?”
“Let’s take her for a spin.”
I get in. I’m young. I’m not a machine. Of course I love the car. I fucking love it. But there’s something about it that just isn’t right, like if you walk in on your kindergarten teacher getting a lap dance.
“Why did you buy this?” I asked him.
“Why?” he repeated, picking up speed. He’s trying to leave himself behind in the dust, I thought, and on some level I could already hear the tendons and joints of his sanity split and tear. His job, his regular hours, his suit, his new ear, and now his car: he was creating unbearable tension between the selves. Something’s going to give, I thought, and it won’t be pretty.
II
Then it gave. It wasn’t pretty.
We were in a crowded Chinese restaurant and Dad was ordering lemon chicken.
“Anything else?” the waiter asked.
“Just some boiled rice and the check.”
Dad always liked to pay before he ate so the second he finished swallowing he could leave. There was something about sitting in a restaurant not eating that he just couldn’t stand. Impatience seized him like a fit. Unfortunately, some restaurants make you pay at the end no matter what. In those situations Dad stood next to the table to show that he no longer wanted anything to do with the table. Then he called for the bill as if he were pleading for mercy. Sometimes he’d carry his plate to the kitchen. Sometimes he’d wave money under the waiter’s nose. Sometimes he’d open the cash register, pay the bill, and give himself change. They hated that.
This night Dad had a table by the window and was staring out, his face set on “boredom incarnate.” I was there, but he was eating alone. I was on a hunger strike for some heroic cause I can’t remember now, but this was probably in the period we ate out eighty-seven nights in a row. Dad used to cook in the old days, but they were old, those days.
We both looked out onto the street because it required so much less effort than talking. Our car was out there, parked behind a white van, and beside it a couple were fighting as they walked. She was pulling his black ponytail and he was laughing. They came right up to the window and fought in front of us, as if they were putting on a show. It was a bold performance. The guy was bent over with a big grin on his face, trying to get her to let go of his hair. It looked painful, having your hair pulled like that, but he wouldn’t stop laughing. Of course, now that I’m older, I know why he had to keep laughing like that; I know he’d have kept on laughing even if she’d pulled his whole head off and dropped it in the gutter and pissed on it and set it on fire. Even with the sting of piss in his dying eyes, he’d have kept on chuckling, and I know why.
The lemon chicken arrived.
“Sure you don’t want any?” Dad asked, a taunting lift in his voice.
The smell of hot lemon made my stomach and my head mortal enemies. Dad threw me a look that was smug and victorious and I gave him one back that was conceited and triumphant. After a grueling five seconds, we both turned our heads quickly to the window, as if for air.
On the street, the fight was in intermission. The girl was sitting on the bonnet of a black Valiant; the guy was standing beside her, smoking a cigarette. I couldn’t see her hands because she had them bunched up under her arms, but I imagined they were clutching pieces of his scalp. Then I heard scraping metal. There was a figure in the background, behind the couple, someone in a red parka, hunched over Dad’s car. The red parka moved alongside the car slowly. It was hard to tell exactly what he was doing, but it seemed that he was scratching the paint off with a key.
“Hey, look!” I shouted, and pointed out the scene to Dad, but his lanky body was already up, running for the door. I leapt out of my chair and followed his trail. This was to be my first chase scene through the streets of Sydney. There have been others over the years, and I’m not always the one in pursuit, but this was the first, so it remains special in my memory.
We did not run gracefully, of course; rather we staggered at great speed, down the main strip, almost toppling over, bursting through couples who strolled absently toward us, ricocheting off them. I remember humming a tune while I ran, a spy tune. We sped through the city like men on fire. People looked on as if they’d never seen running before. Maybe they hadn’t. Outside a cinema, businessmen and -women indistinguishable from each other stood their ground as we approached, as if that square meter of pavement had been handed down to them by their ancestors. We pushed them aside as we ran through. Some of them shouted. Maybe they’d never been touched before either.
The man in the red parka had feet like a gust of wind. He blew across a congested street, dodging the steady stream of traffic. I had taken only one step off the pavement when Dad’s hand grabbed my wrist and almost yanked it off.
“Together,” he said.
Beware the father and son in pursuit of the mysterious villain in the red parka. Beware the menacing duo who hold hands as they make chase. We turned a corner and came into an empty street. Our presence somehow deepened the emptiness of it. There was no one in sight. It felt as though we had stumbled upon a remote and forgotten part of the city. We took a moment to catch our breath. My heart pounded on my chest wall like a shoulder trying to break down a wooden door.
“In there,” Dad said.
Halfway down the street was a bar. We walked to the front. There was no sign on the window. Evidently the bar didn’t have a name. The windows were blacked out and you couldn’t see in. It was a place made dangerous by low lighting. You could tell from the outside. It was the kind of place where nefarious characters knife anyone who asks them for the time, where serial killers go to forget their troubles, where whores and drug dealers exchange phone numbers and sociopaths laugh at the times they’ve been confused with naturopaths.
“Do you want to wait outside?”
“I’m coming in.”
“Things might get ugly.”
“I don’t mind.”
“OK, then.”
Only a few steps in and we were at the cloakroom- we could see the red parka swinging on a hanger, swinging like a tune.
There was a band on the stage, the singer’s voice like the feeling of biting tinfoil. Musical instruments were stuck on the wall above the spirit bottles at the bar- a violin, an accordion, a ukulele. It looked like a pawnbroker’s. Two exhausted bartenders paused every now and then to pour themselves tequila shots. Dad ordered a beer for himself, lemonade for me. I wanted a beer too, but I got lemonade. My whole life’s been like that.
Dad and I kept one eye apiece on the cloakroom and spent a couple of hours guessing who might be our man, but you can’t pick a vandal from a room of faces any more than you can pick an adulterer or a pedophile. People carry their secrets in hidden places, not on their faces. They carry suffering on their faces. Also bitterness, if there’s room. We made our guesses anyway, based on what, I don’t know. Dad chose a short nuggety guy with a goatee. He’s our man, Dad insisted. I begged to differ and picked a guy with long brown hair and an ugly purple mouth. Dad thought he looked like a student, not a vandal. What’s he studying, then?
“Architecture,” Dad said. “One day he’ll build a bridge that will collapse.”