‘Anyway, what do you know? All you do is drive from bloody Melbourne to bloody Perth and back again. One day they’ll train monkeys to do your job.’ Danny said it coldly, keeping the emotion out of his voice. He had learned that from Martin. You didn’t give your words any heat, you didn’t show yourself through them at all.
His father hung his head. Regan started silently to cry. Danny didn’t care, he couldn’t care. His mother’s outraged curse, in Greek so he didn’t understand, pounded in his ears as he went to his room. ‘Throw it back,’ he whispered to himself, ‘give it back to them so they are the ones who are hurt.’
In his room, he sat on the end of his bed, starting to shake. He thought if he got up he would faint. The shame was splitting him open, cracking him apart. No one could ever put him back together, there was no way to do that.
He took a deep breath, flexing his triceps, then moving his arms and shifting the energy to his biceps. He straightened his back — the strength there, the power there. He breathed out and looked up, across to the posters and photographs and medals above his desk. There was the photo torn from the Herald Sun, in colour, Perkins on the dais, kissing his medal, Kowalski in second place, looking straight ahead. Danny would be first, everything would be alright when he came first, all would be put back in place. When he thought of being the best, only then did he feel calm.
As soon as the race starts, he knows he is going to win. It is an open-air pool and the sun is brilliant and the sky is clear and all around the stadium the crowd is shouting out his name. What astounds him is how effortless it all is, he can’t feel his arms, he can’t feel his legs, not only is he in the water but he has become water. The strokes, the kicks, they are exactly like breathing. This is what it must feel like to be a bird, he is rushing through sky. He is in water but he can feel the sun, is reaching the sun. The race finishes and he is first, of course he is first. He has won. He narrows his eyes to slits. He can hardly see the other swimmers, they are trying to reach him but they are miles away, flecks in the far distance. He raises his arm, he salutes the crowd. He looks up and his father’s hand is reaching out to him, to hoist him out of the water. Danny shakes his head. No, he wants to stay here, he wants to stay in the sky and in the water. He looks around. The cheers have fallen silent, the benches are empty. Frightened, he turns back and now Martin and Emma are standing either side of his father. And they are laughing, laughing and pointing at him. Danny looks down. His Speedos have gone, he is naked, and he’s pissing. The stream is a vile acrylic blue, it clouds the water around him. ‘You’ve pissed yourself,’ Martin is laughing. Emma stuffs her hand in her mouth, shaking uncontrollably. And his father, his father too, he can’t stop laughing.
Danny jolted upright. His room was in darkness. He’d pissed his bed, he was sure of it, he’d pissed his bloody bed. His hands searched the sheets and he fell back in relief. His sheets were dry. He peered at the alarm clock: it was not yet two o’clock.
He needed desperately to piss.
The hall was illuminated, the lounge room lit; someone was still up in the kitchen. Trying to ignore the fullness in his bladder, he stood in the doorway. There were record sleeves strewn across the floor, an LP still spinning on the turntable, the needle clicking and crackling as it ran over and over the same soundless groove.
From the kitchen he heard his mother say, ‘I think that school is good for him.’
And he heard his father snort. ‘Yeah? By making him despise his father?’
‘He doesn’t despise you, Neal. He’s just angry. You and I can’t understand the focus he needs, the obsession he has with swimming.’
‘Jesus, Steph, the swimming isn’t the problem. His selfishness is the fucking problem.’
Danny heard a match strike, wrinkled his nose as the acrid smell of the cigarette hit. He was holding his breath, so they wouldn’t hear him, so he could hear his mother’s answer. Defend me, please defend me.
‘Going to that school is a huge opportunity, a really special opportunity, and I am not going to deny him that.’
Another match struck, another cigarette lit.
‘He’s got a chance to be great, Neal. How can you deny your son the chance to achieve that?’
‘I just don’t think it’s fair. Regan is starting high school next year. What about her opportunities? Should we be sending all the kids to those kinds of schools? We couldn’t afford that, baby. How is that fair on Regan, how’s that fair on Theo?’
‘Danny will look after his sister and his brother. I have no doubt about that. He’s a good boy, Neal — you know he’ll do right by us, don’t you?’
Danny slowly exhaled. His mother understood.
He was waiting for his father’s answer.
‘That’s a pretty big burden to place on a young man’s shoulders.’
‘He’s going to be an Olympic champion. Don’t you get it? He’s going to be one of the greats.’
Danny held in his breath again. He had forgotten his full bladder; he was waiting for his father to agree.
‘Steph, baby, what if he isn’t good enough? What if he doesn’t make it?’
Danny crept back down the hall. He couldn’t go to the toilet now, they would hear him. He couldn’t bear for them to know that he had heard them. He softly shut the door to his room.
Danny gently pulled at the window. He winced as it gave with a thud. He was motionless, waiting. But the sound hadn’t carried, they hadn’t heard. A cold gust of wind struck his face. He stood on tiptoes, pulled down his jocks and let go. The stream of urine rattled the side fence, but he didn’t care anymore whether anyone heard. Steam rose from where the urine splashed on the fence palings. Finally, his bladder was empty and Danny carefully shut the window again.
It took an age for him to fall asleep. He had to count through the muscles in his body, tensing and relaxing, the way he’d been taught. He was supposed to clear his mind, but all he could think was how he was going to prove his father wrong. I am going to be the fastest and the strongest and the best and I am going to look after Mum and Regan and Theo, and I’m even going to look after you, you prick. Even you, you prick.
He breathed out.
He relaxed his shoulders, sank into the bed, pretending he was sinking into water. He was determined now, he was going to bring all the worlds together now. He breathed in. They were doing the right thing sending him to that school, they were doing the right thing supporting him. He owed them, he knew that. He owed them but it would be alright. He breathed out.
He fell asleep, knowing it would all be alright.
~ ~ ~
'I DUNN WANNA, I DUNN WANNA, I DUNN WANNA.'
He repeats it over and over, so many times I am no longer aware of the words; what I am listening to is the rhythm, as if the real meaning is in the fall and tumble and shape of the words. Maybe it is. Four years ago, after shooting up a gram of speed and drinking fifteen beers, Kevin tore his car up Burnley Street, Richmond, and lost control of the wheel when he tried to turn the corner into Highett Street. The car slammed into one of the thick-trunked elm trees that shroud that avenue. Kevin, who wasn't wearing his seatbelt, was thrown through the windscreen, his body flung onto the red-brick front fence of a house. It was on the fence that he cracked his head open. He was nineteen and he was lucky. When I first started working with him I was told that if he'd been wearing the seatbelt he would have been concertinaed with the car, reality becoming animation as it collapsed from three to two to one dimension. For the neighbour whose brick wall Kevin's head smashed onto, it must have sounded like an explosion.