No Neat Endings

by Dominic Carew

  We lived in Balgowlah Heights. One of those inland Northern Beaches suburbs five Ks from the sea, so that, if you stood on your roof, you could make out the thin ribbon of blue, where the sky and ocean met.

  As usual, Sue drove, while I sat in the front seat beside her, directing her, both as to street route and compass bearing.

  ‘Veer right onto Donald Avenue in two hundred metres. That’s south-west onto Donald.’

  The girls in the back giggled.

  ‘I know how to get there, Mike. But look. Why don’t you turn the GPS on, if you’re worried I’ve forgotten? It’s your birthday.’

  I pretended not to hear her. ‘In three hundred metres, hard left onto Sydney Road. That’s east, south east onto Sydney.’

  She shook her head in my periphery. I kept my eyes on the road, and explained myself.

  ‘This is how you keep the mind sharp. All the dementia and Alzheimer’s these days is because we don’t work our minds as we age.’

  She took a right, harder than I’d expected.

  ‘GPS causes brain damage,’ she said, straightening the car up. ‘Didn’t know that.’

  I nodded, slow and deep. ‘Yep.’

  She shook her head again.

  ‘We’ll be staying on this for a while now, Sue. Another two and a bit Ks, okay?’

  We arrived at the aquarium, waited in line for half an hour, herded through a little store that sold figurines of fish, whales and dolphins, not to mention T-shirts, key rings and cork-string hats, and finally came into a long, cool tunnel with a glass roof at which pressed tonnes of water. And slimy, whiskered faces.

  ‘Where’s the walrus?’ I asked the lady in front me. She looked like she worked here, in her white polo shirt, her blue Bermuda shorts.

  She turned around. A Chinese lady. A tourist.

  ‘Look Daddy,’ Alice said, taking my hand.

  I looked. Above our heads two winged manta rays glided through their world. Sedate. Somehow free. Diametric gills fluttered underneath them, sucking in all that water, turning it to air. The magic of it didn’t move me. It wouldn’t either. Not until I’d seen the walrus.

  So I said, ‘Where’s the walrus?’ this time to anyone who’d listen.

  ‘Excuse me, Sir,’ said a pimply kid holding a silver bucket. I couldn’t figure out if the fish-reek came from it, or him. ‘We don’t have a walrus. We have a seal though. Gerald. He’s out in the rock pool. You’ll see him. Just go to the end of this tunnel, and turn right.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. He smiled widely then disappeared among the throng.

  Walruses were by far the ugliest, grimmest, out-of-shape sea animals in existence, as far as I knew (which, when it came to marine biology, wasn’t much, admittedly). Seals I had very little time for, agile – youthful –as they were. I didn’t care about seals.

  As we emerged from the tunnel, our eyes stung from the outside light. We sat in an amphitheatre on high concrete steps and looked down at Gerald. A pleasant surprise. It almost made me smile. There he lay. An old grey heap, splayed flat to the rocks like a busted inner tube. No walrus, perhaps, but nice and unfit all the same. I felt, for the first time since turning forty, I’d found my kin, one who shared my anguish.

  ‘He’s a wreck,’ I said to Sue, from the corner of my mouth.

  She nudged me in the ribs.

  ‘Girls. Look how old he is.’

  ‘Like you Daddy,’ said Anna, and Alice giggled. Then she went quiet.

  ‘He’s sleeping,’ she said, thoughtfully, and I had to agree. Could you blame him? Poor haggard thing. On his last, no doubt, exhausted. All that diving and balancing balls on his nose and splashing water with his brown-black flipper, had to have been tiring. The strain it would’ve put on his body made me wonder, suddenly, if he’d ever had a hernia himself. I ran a hand across my belly. I could still feel the bumps through my shirt where the scar sat raised and faintly purple. It always made me think of Dad. How a man so vital, healthy and active, so successful in his life, could drop dead like he had, another man’s heart in his bloody hands. It was all so sad. Why did he have to die, huh? Why did he have to have a heart attack so young? Couldn’t he have held out a decade longer? That way, I would’ve had close to thirty years left.

  We took a window-side table at Doyle’s, got settled then nodded to the girls that they could now use the bathroom. They ran off. Sue and I sat gazing through the restaurant’s glass to the Opera House across the Quay, its scored white sails glinting in the sun.

  ‘You’re doing well,’ she said, still looking out, squeezing my hand beneath the circular table. ‘My big old goof.’

  I looked at my watch. It was only two o’clock! On day one! But I refrained from quipping back. I squeezed her hand too and clenched my teeth.

  Our girls came back, red-faced, their blonde stringy hair mussed and slightly wet.

  ‘Did you fall in?’ I asked, beating Sue to it.

  ‘Come here, girls,’ she said, and she went about reforming their pretty faces. Watching them then, my three fair women, with all that light outside, and all that blue, my chest swelled with the sea of feelings no man can hold still for long, and I realised that my crisis wasn’t one of lacking, of having failed to live enough, so typical of a man, but, rather, the opposite. Of having right here before me, so much to live for. The idea was like a lead weight, and a helium balloon, somehow meshed together.

  ‘Right,’ I said, straightening my back, stifling what was about to become a pathetic outcry. ‘I think I’ll get a prawn cocktail. M’ladies? Is this okay?’

  Smiles and nods of love came at me, like gusts of spring air.

  On the drive back to the Heights, as we turned onto the expressway, I flicked the GPS on, then looked at Sue. She smiled, warmly, at the road. I took hold of the handle above the window and gazed out. In the back, the girls snoozed, deadened by the weight of all that food.

  I tried not to think about anything but the rubber tyres against the asphalt. The rhythm of that. The cool air from the vents ruffling the hairs on my arm. And for a while, about a K, I did an alright job. But then I saw Dad’s face in his bed at home, the night after he’d died. The sheet was pulled up to his chin and his arms were out straight by his sides. It wasn’t possible of course. They never brought him home. He went straight downstairs to the morgue. And yet the image of him lying there seemed real, scarily so. And then I realised what I was picturing: my own bed. And the man laid out wasn’t Dad, but me.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sue asked, as we turned onto Military Road.

  ‘Switching this damn thing off.’

  ‘Mike.’

  ‘Now. In one and a half kilometres…’

  Back home the girls went up to their rooms with Louis. They’d forgotten by now that it was my birthday, absorbed back into their own worlds which I could only look at from outside, like you do at an aquarium. That’s how far the young are from the old. They may as well be fish. I sure as hell was Gerald.

  Sue and I sat outside on the porch, our bellies growling over the meals inside, the meat last night, the seafood today.

  She had a cup of tea, and I reached over to take it from her, have a sip.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Have my tea. Don’t know what I was thinking, really.’

  ‘Ahh,’ I said.

  ‘You’re doing well,’ she said.

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘It’s four o’clock already. No scene. No breakdown. Well done, honey.’

  But what about my heart? I thought. Didn’t she know that prawns were deadly, choc-full of LDL?

  She did.

  Of course she did.

  But for now I wouldn’t press it. I handed her back her cup.

  ‘You know, that stuff is full of tannin. Will keep you up all night.’

  ‘God help us both,’ she said.

  I looked at her. Her calm grace issued forth as she gazed up at the lawn. I had a lot to lose alright. I loved my wife. I loved my daughters. I felt the urge right the
n to cry with joy, and fear of course, but I didn’t. I held it back, and in. Which is why, as I’ve said, it made sense that I was anxious. A man at the top of his days knows that he is living. The sweetest times are with him. And they will end. And for that, they are sweeter yet. I wanted to reach out a hand and run a finger across her skin. Later I’d do just that, as our girls slept in their beds upstairs. For now, I had something further to add about tea, and what the research was showing. And how if she kept on drinking the stuff like she did, gallons of it, with all that flavour masquerading as herbs, she’d be gone before I was, which we both knew would be very, very, soon.

  ‘You should read the latest,’ I started. ‘In the meantime, let me précis it for you now.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘Well. What they reckon is, this chemical called alpha-dioxinate, or something, adheres to the walls of your lower bowel…’

  She Must be Spanish

  I wake up this morning on my own. On my back. Looking at the ceiling. Before I even yawn, I reach for my phone and open Facebook. Top of my newsfeed, a wedding album. Holy shit. I rub an eye with a knuckle. An ex-girlfriend got married. On a beach on the south coast somewhere. The sun shone. How wonderful for her (I think, sarcastically). She was beautiful. I mean, she looks beautiful here on my phone in a dazzling gown, her dark hair naturally flung about her shoulders. We broke up four years ago, by which I mean I broke up with her. I always break up with her. By which I mean I’m still single. Her wedding photos are typical (but lovely). The applauding friends. The bridal party. And here and there an image of her robed in that classic dress, her hair shining. I’m reminded of the way she looked the nights we fell in love, how I felt waiting on her doorstep, the dusk and all its promises descending on the earth. Wait. Why? I think, am I doing this?

  I back out of her album, her photos, her life, and scroll on down my newsfeed. A video of a guy I met traveling, bungee jumping off a bridge. A status update that’s all emojis. An ad for Hungry Jacks.

  And then.

  I don’t believe this.

  Another ex. This one’s by a beach in Sydney with her husband and their firstborn child, right there in the middle of my newsfeed. They are standing behind their son, embraced and smiling into the camera, or beyond it maybe, into the blue of the sky, and he, the little boy, is smiling too, as if at me, who was stupid enough to let his mummy go. ‘We are so blessed,’ says the caption. ‘We are rich with fortune.’

  Rich. With fortune.

  Last night I spent three hundred dollars on drinks at the Beresford trying to get girls to talk to me. Some of them did. One stood in front of me with folded arms and said, ‘Move.’ My jumper was uncool. My jumper was ‘shit’, one of them told me on the dance floor. Every time I went to the toilet I opened Tinder and Happn and Bumble. The dance floor heaved. I got a taxi home by myself after saying goodbye to a mate. He got a taxi home by himself. We said goodbye on the footpath outside the bar, the music thudding through the glass. It was cold. As I watched him walk down the footpath to a cab, I thought, fuck it’s cold, but what I really thought was, there’s no lonelier moment to endure in all of life than now, Sunday morning, alone on a footpath in a city.

  Facebook’s built on algorithms. Beyond that I don’t know how it works. This morning there must be one at play, linking single guys with all their exes. Because – I really don’t believe this – a post from another ex-girlfriend springs up on my newsfeed. This time, she’s on a bike some place with her husband on a bike behind her, his legs raised from the pedals in a kind of salute. With her, I never quite felt the connection. But this morning, I think, like, maybe I should’ve given it time.

  I scroll on down. A video of someone’s bowl of food, closing in then zooming out. A sunset posted by a guy I don’t remember meeting. And then, by some app-tech glitch, a picture of Sally Davis, right there, smack bang in the heart of my newsfeed. Oh dear Sally. What I wouldn’t do for you right now, in this bed of mine, cold on the side that’s empty. Empty on the side with me in it. My mouth goes dry, suddenly. From the hangover, perhaps, but I’m not so sure. The sense of something graver hits me and I’m dizzy with vertigo, as if the past is rushing by me, its bounty sailing off without me towards a future that can’t be mine. What an awful way to start the day. Mark Zuckerberg. You fuckwit.

  I exit Facebook.

  I open Happn.

  Nothing happening.

  I text Annabel, the girl I had a date with last week. I say, ‘Annabel, I woke up thinking about you.’

  Then I message Caroline, a friend who’s sometimes more than a friend. ‘Hey. Wanna go for a coffee??’

  And now I open Tinder. A new match! Her name is Alejandra. She’s got almond-shaped eyes with so much hair it makes me ache. She must be Spanish, with a name like Alejandra.

  Caroline texts back. And Annabel too. She says, ‘Hehe! Aww.’ And there’s three fluffy animal emojis and smiley faces blowing kisses. Their eyes are scrunched up, as if the light from my screen is hurting. And as I have my breakfast and put on my jeans, I feel nostalgic, somehow, for the past. The fifties, say, when no one had a TV yet and everyone lived in small towns and you shopped for meat at a butcher’s, for fruit at markets that smelled dank with greens and every now and then you went to a store to buy some milk from the man who owned it, only one day he wasn’t there, a girl was instead, probably his daughter, blonde and pretty and standing by the till. And even though you didn’t know it then, two years later you’d marry her. And that, as they used to say, would be that.

  Caroline’s wearing a red jacket that’s too big for her body. I don’t know a lot about clothes but I know it looks no good on her. It looks no good, I think, and she knows it; I’ve never been good at hiding things. Not in my face, anyway. You can see the truth there, always.

  ‘What do you even want from me?’

  It’s a fair question. I’m pretty sure she’s Spanish. Wouldn’t that be cool? Caroline says if I’m going to mope she’d rather have coffee with someone else. And would I please stop texting her in the morning when I’m lonely and feeling sorry for myself.

  ‘You drink too much.’

  It’s true. I wonder if Ally drinks. Can I call her that? Surely her friends call her that. Funny thing is, all these years I didn’t think I’d be with someone foreign. I thought she’d be an Aussie girl. From a similar background. With similar values. Strange, how life throws you round bends you didn’t think you’d go around.

  Twists. Turns. Kinks.

  ‘Caroline,’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  I get up and leave and walk home and lie on my couch and Caroline writes me a message, calling me a bastard. She follows that with another text. I have no idea what I want. I don’t understand myself at all. Disturbing, she writes, for a twenty-nine year old. I delete it. I delete the one before as well while I think of what to say to Ally. Her hair. It just goes on and on. ‘Dear Ally…’ No. ‘Alejandra. Tell me. Are you from Spain?’

  Send?

  Not yet. I’ll go for a walk and imagine her a little longer. Imagine how I’ll feel meeting her one night, next week, say, light ebbing from the far sky, heart racing, mind flush with promise again. Walking helps me see things clearly. For what they really are. Caroline thinks I don’t know myself at all, but she’s wrong. I know myself exactly. I know what I want. I almost can’t believe it. A Spanish girl!

  Giant Shadows

  His sister’s kids sat around on the deck when they should’ve been at the beach or climbing trees or generally looking for trouble. If he hadn’t been in a wheelchair, he’d have taken them all by the scruff of the neck and hauled them off on some not too safe adventure, just to show ‘em how it was out there. Instead, he sat there crippled from a motorbike accident, twenty years back, when that goddamn truck had run the red. He’d had a choice to brake or speed up. He’d sped up.

  Now, it was just past one o’clock. Hot. You could hear cicadas and not much else. Sunshine everywhere, the deck in s
hade but only just, with sunlight dribbling through the lattice wrapped in jasmine and bougainvillea. It landed on their blonde heads.

  ‘You kids wanna hear a story?’

  The two girls nodded and little Sam, the youngest, blinked. Sam’s brother, Michael, came and sat by him, patted his knee gently as if to say: tell us, Simon. But don’t make us cry.

  ‘Wanna hear a story that’ll knock ya socks off?’

  ‘Yes Simon,’ said Michael, though the git pronounced it Simón.

  ‘Alright, but if you have nightmares, I ain’t coppin’ shit from your parents. Keep the bad dreams to y’selves.’

  His sister, Mag, came out to the deck with a plateful of watermelon and a half-dozen ice-blocks shaped like butterflies, which the children took from her and sucked politely. She eyed him with something like distrust and something else, kind of like fear. He waited for her to go back inside the house but she wouldn’t. So he started.

  ‘A long time ago I bought a flame thrower. I’d go into the streets at sunset when the dust formed a ring around town and the light dripped through it like honey. I’d go out with a flame thrower on me back.’

  ‘Flame thrower,’ said Sam, unsure, maybe, what that was.

  ‘I had to pull a cord to get it started. When it got goin’ it was loud as hell right there on me back, at the back of me neck like it was alive or somethin’.’

  ‘Why Simón?’

  He shook his head, looked out at the yard. ‘Giant bats, mate. They live in the caves on the beaches. I had to shoot ‘em outta the sky with flames.’

  He glanced at Michael, who sucked his fingers, wide-eyed, who watched a knot of wood in the table-top so intently, the little man must’ve been listening hard. Maggie knew what was coming. He could tell by the way she stood there waiting for it so that afterwards when the kids had gone inside, she’d be justified asking him to leave. She’d done it before, at Christmas and at Easter and on Mandy’s birthday. She’d rolled him out the house and slammed the door.