‘You ever take a look at yourself and you’re surprised by the person you’ve become?’
He didn’t have to talk about the real fights when it felt like his old man was a part of the relationship, waiting in the wings in Sydney until such time as he would be called on to join them. Until Lucy had ‘fixed’ the ‘situation’ and they had Thursday night dinners in front of the TV the three of them all together.
‘I guess a bloke could understand that.’ But Bob’s face did not understand.
‘First time, we’d had a row and she’d gone out and stayed the night at a friend’s, left me to think about things.’ All that night, the way he’d counted stripes in the curtains and his anger had built grain by grain like an egg timer. His chest had felt swollen. He’d broken wine glasses into the sink. ‘I think she thought I’d cool off, thought I’d see it her way. But when she came in the next morning I slapped her in the face. I did it twice, once on each cheek.’ Again there was a pause and he wondered what he was doing telling Bob, who was his friend. ‘I suppose that’s the difference. If it’d been in the heat of a fight, and I’d done it once and then stopped. But I did it twice, one, two. Like she was a kid. And I was still angry, God, I was so angry. She just stood there looking at me.’
Bob was watching the floor. Frank put his tongue on his bottom lip and left it here a long time. He shrugged and Bob looked up.
‘Don’t know what you’re supposed to do. Apologise for it? Am I meant to talk about it? Get someone to tell me what a rotten shit I am? I don’t know.’
‘Well,’ said Bob evenly, ‘the main thing, I suppose, is that you don’t do it any more.’
‘Because she left me, mate. Not straight off. We tried. I got better but then sometimes I got worse. I don’t think she believed it. I think that’s how come she stayed so long.’
Oh, sure they’d tried. He’d skinned himself with trying, but she was so persistent, even more after that first time. She wanted it bad. He remembered her standing at the sink making tea, something tight about her shoulders, neat in a grey V-neck, her hair drawn back out of her face in an unusually sober ponytail. Her hands moved deliberately, like they were the part of her that had business to discuss.
‘So I was thinking we could head over to Sydney for the weekend. There’s the winter fair in Centennial Park, and I was thinking maybe we could hire a stall and get rid of some of the junk in the spare room.’ She put half a teaspoon of her special soup-smelling loose tea in a mug and a normal black tea bag in a cup for him. She put down the spoon.
‘Sydney?’ Frank felt his toes grip the floor, his heart took a flutter.
She looked at him, lips closed but eyebrows moving up, like it was a casual thing all over. ‘Yup, Sydney.’ They regarded each other a moment longer, then she turned to pour the water. The noise of it was a pause.
‘Is this about him?’
Her shoulders squared, her back moved as she breathed in. She unscrewed the milk and poured some over his tea bag. ‘Doesn’t have to be. I mean, it couldn’t hurt just to go and take a look.’ She put the milk down. There she was, standing there, not understanding. ‘I’d like to see where you grew up. I’d like to meet him. It couldn’t hurt.’
‘I’ve told you, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’
She stirred her cup, wiped the spoon on a tea towel and stirred his. Her voice shook. ‘I think you are being unfair.’
He didn’t reply. The silence was better than what he was thinking, that she could fuck off out of his business and that not having a family of your own didn’t entitle you to glitch in on everyone else’s. She took his tea bag out with the spoon, squashed it against the side of the mug, stepped on the bin pedal and dropped it in. It made a dull pat in the empty bin bag. She squatted to find the sugar in the cupboard, all in silence, all with her back to him. He knew this quiet, it was when her eyes were filling up and she was steeling herself against speaking. It was the thing she did that was not fair because he hadn’t done anything wrong and she was threatening him with tears anyway.
She inhaled loudly through her nose. ‘Why can’t we go?’ Still he stayed quiet. One sugar, two and three, and she stirred the cup and a small brown dot of tea spattered on to the sideboard. Her hand trembled and she set down the spoon with a bang. She breathed in again. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. You have this link and you just want to ignore it. You know what it means to me. You know.’ Her voice almost cracked, but she was not crying, she was angry. ‘I mean, what could he have done? Did he kill someone? Did he molest you?’
‘No.’
‘Did he beat you?’
‘No.’
‘Then for Chrissakes what else is there that is so unforgivable?’
She rested her hands on the sideboard, hunching her shoulders. He picked at the wax tablecloth. She turned with both mugs in her hands, planted his down in front of him and made to leave the room with hers. ‘Well, you can stay here and be silent all you like. I’m going to Sydney on Friday.’ Frank stood and the chair squeaked on the lino. He looked at her, glowered over her, felt his heart beat in his throat and she avoided his look and walked away. He sat down, put his hand to his forehead, waited until the heartbeat slowed. He pressed his fingernails into his scalp. He looked at his tea, the small bubbles in it and the black specks that had escaped the bag.
She came running back into the room. ‘Wait!’ she shouted. Her eyes were red.
‘What for?’
‘I forgot to boil the water.’
She hadn’t gone to Sydney that time and it had blown over.
A few months later he’d held her face and squeezed it hard, and she was crying. He’d seen the light go out, he’d seen that that was it, his last chance and it was gone.
‘Creeeeeee!’ went the Creeping Jesus. ‘Creeeee craaaaa!’
‘I don’t really believe it. You don’t seem like the sort of bloke that’s capable of that kind of a thing, mate.’
‘Well. You never know.’
‘You try and find her?’
Frank shook his head. ‘We’re better off not knowing each other. New starts.’
‘You miss her?’
‘I try not to think about her.’
‘And what about now?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Now you’re telling me this stuff — now you’re thinking about her. What’s that like?’
He paused like he was thinking, but inside he was blank. ‘Sometimes I’m worried that if I found her it’d start again. Like I said, we tried before and some of the time it was fine. But it’s always there. I miss her but.’
The night around them went quiet, even the cicadas turned away, as if the land held its breath to listen.
Bob stayed until the last of the beer was gone. They should both have been stupid with booze, but it went down like water and made no difference to Frank. Bob did not slur his words and when he got up to leave his walk was straight and casual. He shook Frank’s hand and they shared a smile. You’ve done it now, you silly arsehole, he thought as Bob’s tail-lights disappeared round the corner of the sugar cane. If you hadn’t already done it before.
She’d talked to him about growing up in the home early on, it poured out of her with the tip of a prod from him. She was one of those doorstep kids, too young to talk when she was left there. She didn’t remember her mum, didn’t remember being taken in. Did remember her first foster family, her foster-dad who insisted she call him daddy and hold his dick for him while he grunted into her hands. She remembered getting sent away from them, back to the home, the interviews as she got older, sets of people coming to see if they liked her, deciding no, they did not, and leaving. And Frank remembered that first time he’d blown up at her and the look on her face, and the thought, Oh God, I’ve made her life worse, not better.