When he got back his father was in the kitchen, Theo on his knee, and he was listening to the boy read. They both looked up when Danny entered and his father said, ‘How was it?’
‘How was what?’
‘The beach party.’
‘It wasn’t a beach party.’
It was as though they couldn’t be in the same room; they had to circle around each other, there was no topic or words or action that was safe.
‘Where’s Mum?’ Danny opened the fridge, took out a Tim Tam and wolfed it down. Theo was looking eagerly at him and the Tim Tam.
‘She’s just gone down to the supermarket for a minute.’
‘Is there food?’
‘In the stove.’
Danny dangled a Tim Tam in front of Theo then pulled it away as the little boy tried to grab it. As Theo clamoured to get off his father’s lap, the man swiped the Tim Tam from Danny and gave it to Theo, who poked his tongue out at his brother before stuffing the chocolate biscuit into his mouth.
There was half a vegetarian lasagne under foil. He tossed all of it on a plate and hungrily attacked it, spoonful after spoonful, the sweetness of the peppers, onions and tomatoes, the tartness of the olive oil and the heaviness of the pasta sheets, the slight bitterness of the zucchini. He finished it all, listening as Theo continued reading from The Happy Prince.
Once Danny had read this story out loud to his father, and so had Regan. Oscar Wilde was one of the great heroes of Ireland, his father had told him when he first gave Danny the book, and a great injustice had been done to him. Danny had only very recently discovered exactly what they had done to him, and why they had done it to him, in English class, accompanied by a chorus of barking and laughter that kept erupting from the boys. Danny couldn’t bear to hear the story of the happy prince anymore — the loneliness of it overwhelmed him. It would make Theo cry, he knew it would, as it made him cry when the sparrow fell dead at the statue’s feet, when the statue was melted down to molten lead. He tightened his hands into fists, he swallowed. He was glad to hear a car pulling up outside, his mother’s footsteps coming up the path.
‘OK, little man,’ his father said to Theo. ‘We’ll read more of it tomorrow.’
His mother came in carrying a six-pack of beer, Regan following behind her, munching on a Bounty. She was getting fat, thought Danny disapprovingly. He couldn’t understand why his mother or his father didn’t say something to her. His mother handed his father a beer and opened one for herself. He watched his parents drink. His father’s arms were ropy, strong, speckled with fair hair, the tan a varnish over his pale skin. There was grey at his temples. Every year his paunch got bigger — the constant driving, the cheap and greasy food. His mother was also going grey but she hid it by sometimes dyeing her hair blonde, sometimes red, mostly jet-black. As she lifted the beer to her mouth, her upper arms wobbled, they were getting flabby. Danny sat still in his body, feeling the straight lines of it, the tautness of it. There was no flab there, no paunch, nothing ugly.
‘Did you eat all the lasagne?’
‘There was only half of it left.’
She came over, wrapped her arms around him. ‘I just don’t know where it goes.’
He smelled the sour yeast of the beer, felt the loose flesh of her forearms squashing his own firm skin. It is energy, he wanted to say, I convert it all to energy. It was simple, it was basic physics. Danny pulled away from his mother’s embrace and got up from the table. ‘You’re still gunna drive me to training tomorrow, aren’t ya?’ He was looking at his mother, but he could sense his father’s body tensing, a sudden snap of air.
‘Your mother is sleeping in tomorrow.’
There was no space, no possible space between himself and his father that was safe.
‘Fine, then.’ Danny opened the fridge to get another Tim Tam. ‘I’ll just have to catch public transport.’ He slammed the door. ‘Again.’
Regan’s eyes were darting from the fridge, to the Tim Tam, to Danny, to her father, back to Danny. They found her mother, who smiled at her reassuringly.
‘It’s a holiday, son,’ his father said. ‘You can swim in the afternoon.’
No, he will swim in the morning and he will swim in the afternoon. He was already behind from spending the last two nights at the Taylors’ beach house.
‘It’s alright, Neal, I’ll take him in the morning.’
‘No!’ His father almost shouted the word. Theo dropped his book and Regan rushed to Danny’s side. ‘You and I are sleeping in tomorrow. If he needs to swim he can fucking walk there.’
I do need to swim, you dumbfuck arsehole, I have to swim. Danny wished that his father wasn’t there at all, that he was lost somewhere in the desert. Regan put her hand in the crook of his arm. The small tender gesture calmed him. Why couldn’t it be just him and Theo and Mum and Regan? Just them.
‘OK, OK, Mum can sleep in. I said I’ll take public transport.’ But he couldn’t resist it, he wanted to get one dig in, just one small dig. He said it quietly, not quite under his breath: ‘That cool with you, Mr Shitkicker Truck Driver?’
But his father heard, his father exploded. ‘Fuck you, you’re not going swimming at all. You’re going to stay here and we’re going to spend the day as a family.’
Danny wouldn’t look at his father. ‘I’ve got more important things to do.’
‘Like swanning around with your Portsea mates at their beach parties. That’s what you’d prefer to do, isn’t it?’
His father made it sound dirty, made them sound dirty, made Danny feel dirty. Couldn’t he be four thousand kilometres away, couldn’t he be forever and ever and ever away?
Danny couldn’t look at him, the contempt would choke him. Put it back on him, throw it back at him.
‘It wasn’t a frigging beach party. It was Martin’s grandmother’s birthday.’
She said I know myself, she said I’m not like the middle class. He wanted to find a way to express it to his father, to make it alright. His father also hated the middle class; he said it all the time, that the country was so bloody unrelentingly middle class. But Danny couldn’t connect the spaces between where he’d been with the old woman and where he was now with his father.
His father slammed his beer bottle down on the table. ‘Do you know the old dame whose birthday you were celebrating yesterday, Danny? Do you know anything about her? Do you know who she really is?’
She’s like you. I can’t explain it, but she is exactly like you.
‘Do you have a clue who her husband was?’
Danny could sense the danger, he knew he should just get out and go to his room. But his dad’s scornful eyes, his dad’s disdainful tone, they had trapped him, they wouldn’t let him go.
‘Her husband was one of the biggest donors to the Liberal Party, one of their key benefactors. His money was behind every strike they tried to break, his money put the bloody premier where he is now. His money helped make Howard prime minister!’ His father’s voice was shaking. ‘That’s the kind of filth you’re associating with, son. Do you really think that kind of shit doesn’t stick to you?’
Danny looked around the small kitchen, at the cramped cupboards, the cups with broken handles, the burnt pots, the stove with the one element that didn’t work. It was all too small, too mean here. There was no space at all.
‘So what? You’re just jealous.’
They were right, the boys at school were right when they said that people envied the rich. His old man envied him, couldn’t stand the idea that his son was going to be better than him. That was why he was punishing Danny. He had to throw it back at his father. Humiliate him.