by Candice Fox
“Have you guys finished moving in?” she asked.
“We’ve still got to unpack the boxes,” I said, screwing the gas bottle in. “But that won’t take too long.”
“I knew the guy who lived here before,” Penny said. “Mr. Byles. He was grumpy.”
“Well,” I said, “we’re not grumpy.”
“Is that your wife?” She could see Chloe at the sink through the kitchen window.
“My girlfriend.”
“She’s pretty.”
“So are you,” I said. She didn’t blush. Didn’t respond. Didn’t giggle, like someone younger might. Probably heard it all the time. She was switched on, this one. I was feeling a heat creep up my neck, a familiar feeling. Chemicals colliding. The shame is an instant thing with me. I feel sorry. That’s what people will never understand. That’s why I will never tell anyone. Because normal people don’t know these feelings, these intense, sickening, prickling sensations rushing over my skin. I know it’s wrong. I know I’m wrong, I’m—
“How old are you?” she asked.
“I’m twenty-four,” I told her.
“That’s old.” She smiled. Knew she was being sassy. Cheeky little bitch. I laughed. Her mother called her from the house.
“How old are—” I began. But she was gone. Disappeared. A mystery girl who might never have been there. When Chloe touched my arm I jumped. I’d been listening hard to the slap of Penny’s shoes up the steps, the crash of the screen door as she left my life.
My adult girlfriend asked me something, I don’t remember what. I responded, I guess, because she went away. I crouched on the bricks and cut the cable ties we’d secured the barbecue shut with, all the while deafened by the painful, relentless ringing of Penny’s name in my brain.
Three or four weeks after I was arrested for Claire Bingley’s sexual assault and attempted murder, my wife gave up on me. She surrendered to the relentless pursuits by 60 Minutes and gave them an interview distancing herself from me, stopped visiting me as often in remand, stopped appearing in the audience at my committal hearings. She still called and wrote and came to meetings when my lawyer summoned her, but she could hardly look me in the eye, and she called me Edward, when for fourteen years it had been Ted. I lost sight of my daughter, Lillian. She’d been just beyond the visiting room glass, and then she was only a wailing sound in the background of Kelly’s cold phone calls. Soon, she was just an occasional picture on the phone, soundless, foreign. The ghost of a child whose tiny body I had once held in my arms, whose tired eyes I had smiled at, as she blinked slowly, refusing to sleep. Whisperings in the dark at 3 a.m.
The few people who believed in my innocence couldn’t understand Kelly’s actions, but I could. It was safer, emotionally, to give up on me. My incarceration wasn’t a slow and drawn-out thing. I went to work one morning and never came back, and suddenly this man appeared in Kelly’s life, always at a distance, worn out and terrified and not allowed to kiss or touch her in the prison. A man who everyone was telling her had done a vicious thing that they were certain they could prove. We haven’t ever talked about it, but I imagine that to Kelly, the Ted she knew died that day. I know what that feels like. He kind of died for me, too. I knew myself as a sort of happy-go-lucky character, an easygoing bloke who loved his family, his job, the warm, sunlit corner of the living room on a Sunday afternoon, book and beer in hand. I can’t imagine ever being that Ted again now. To me he seems naïve and tragic, a figure eternally waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under him.
All this terrible history with the dead Ted and his ghost child and his icy wife accumulated into a swirling nervousness as I stood in the lift of the building that housed the Department of Family and Community Services on Macquarie Street in Parramatta. Kelly and I had texted about meeting somewhere public with plenty of distractions, but with the press after me and the threat of vigilantes, we thought it would be safest for our daughter to meet deep in the bowels of the soulless but decidedly inaccessible building for my first supervised visit. Under my arm I carried a soft, badly wrapped package. Linda and Sharon shuffled uneasily behind me in the tiny elevator like two restless bulldogs, detecting my rising trepidation with their tightly wound protective senses. As I watched the electronic numbers counting off floors Sharon startled me with a thump in the shoulder.
“From Khalid.”
I looked at the tiny box he thrust toward me, as long as my index finger and wrapped in thick gold paper. A tiny silver bow slightly crushed by Sharon’s jacket. When I didn’t take it, Sharon jerked it at me, impatient.
“What is it?”
“A present, fuckhead. What do you reckon?” He snorted. Linda sighed in agreement.
“I don’t want a present.”
“It’s for the baby.” Sharon palmed the box into my chest, knocking the breath out of me. “Jesus.”
I slipped the box into my pocket as the doors opened. Kelly was standing there. I should have known. The more worried about me she was, the further out she always stood from home, trying to meet me at the earliest possible opportunity. Sometimes, when I’d had a dangerous shift on drug squad, or failed to answer my phone, I’d turn into our street and find her standing on the corner, watching for my car as it appeared in the night. It surprised me how good she looked now. I guess I’d unconsciously thought she might be as physically battered by the past year as I was. But she was fit, athletic. When we were together she had liked to run for stress. She must have been pounding the pavement like a mad person.
“Kelly,” I said, smiling. “Hi.”
“Hi.” She backed away to let us all out of the elevator, seemed to suffer the impulse to hug me before correcting herself. She wrung her hands at her chest. “How are you.” A statement, not a question.
“You can hug me,” I said. I don’t know why. Maybe she didn’t want to. I knew I was cringing but couldn’t stop myself. My throat hurt. This was all so awful. “It’s … It’s okay.”
Kelly danced forward and put her arms around me like I was hot to the touch, only made contact with her palms on my back. The gesture seemed to exhaust the very last vestiges of any goodwill she’d managed to gather over the time since we’d last seen each other. She examined my face the way she used to when I’d copped a stray elbow during a raid.
“What the fuck happened to you?”
“Oh, shit.” I touched my face, remembering. “I, um—”
“And who are these guys?” She took another step back so she could take in the enormous spectacle that was the two men behind me. “Sorry, do you mind?”
“They’re with me.” I tried to take Kelly’s arm, consolatory. She shifted away. “I’m sorry. They’re sort of … my escorts, I guess.”
“Are you fucking serious, Edward?” Kelly marveled at me. “You turn up here on your daughter’s birthday with your face half bashed in and two … two…”
She flung her arm at Linda and Sharon. Tried to find a word. I didn’t have one to offer.
“Are these guys associated with your drug dealer friends?” Kelly was really on the warpath now. I remembered all her little gestures, how they’d come on like lights in a sequence as her anger grew. The squinting eyes. The vein down the side of her neck.
“Lady, if we could get going…” Linda gestured with his big palm toward the hall behind Kelly, like a nightclub bouncer showing a crazy drunk woman the door. “People need to use the elevator.”
“Don’t.” I shook my head at him. “Don’t tell my wife what to do.”
“I’m not your wife!” Kelly snapped. “This is bullshit!”
I could hear Lillian crying down the hall. The sound of it cut through the argument like a fire alarm. We all stopped, Kelly making little upset sounds as she panted, wiping her sweating brow.
“Let’s just go,” I told her. “Can I please—”
She walked off on me. I followed her, the goons close at my back.
“I need you guys to back off a bit, huh?” I told them as I walk
ed. “This is my family.”
“We know.”
“So cut me some fucking slack. I haven’t seen them in a long time. I’m making an attempt to enjoy myself here.”
Any enjoyment I might have expected or hoped for dissolved when I turned the corner and found my two-year-old daughter standing in the waiting room of the office, surrounded by adults.
Lillian took one look at me and started screaming.
* * *
Kelly and I were not divorced. We’d had a run at it and failed. The problems had occurred first on her end, with Kelly asking a judge to put a supervised visitation order in place after my release and then refusing to answer my or my lawyer’s calls. She’d hired her own lawyer and decided to take me for everything, and then fired the lawyer without explanation and backed away. After months of silence, we’d reconnected gently and drawn up a settlement, but just as we were about to proceed, it was me who stalled, telling her I needed time to think about the fairness of the settlement. Really, I’d just been terrified of signing the final papers. But she hadn’t pushed me to do it. All the paperwork was still split between my house and hers, filled with little yellow tabs showing where our signatures needed to go.
The indecision about the divorce played out in my indecision about my wedding ring. The first time I’d taken it off had been on the car ride up to Cairns, Sydney in my rearview mirror. I’d stashed it in the car’s glove box, but put it back on soon enough, my finger feeling bare and weird. Over the months, I proceeded to furiously take it off and slam it down, sheepishly pick it up and put it back on, usually drunk for each. I had it on now, twisted it around and around my finger as I walked around the corner, following Kelly.
There were two social workers and some dude Kelly had brought with her, perhaps her new boyfriend, I didn’t know. Kelly crouched and swept Lillian into her arms, took her away from me, left me and my goon squad standing there with her emotional support network. The social workers were the typical kind I’d encountered many times before in my job, diving into meth dens and sweeping twitching, withdrawn newborns and stinking, scab-covered toddlers out of the dark depths. Hard faces. Long skirts. Lanyards with swipe cards and ID hanging around their necks.
I reached for the dude first. It didn’t look like anyone was going to introduce him.
“Ted.” I put out a hand.
“Jett,” he said, shaking my hand hard. No explanation of who he was. I could tell he was Kelly’s man. The handshake was clearly a big gesture for him, something he’d decided on well in advance. He looked around to make sure the ladies noticed it, him being the bigger person. He was much shorter than me, but fit, wiry, the way Kelly had become. Something about the outer ends of his eyebrows wasn’t right. Were they waxed? A lot of him seemed oddly, unnaturally hairless, in fact, now that I was getting close to him. The angry Ted deep inside was causing me to posture like a cop, chest out, looking down the nose, tight mouth. Don’t do that, I scolded myself. Don’t be a dick. This guy might end up your daughter’s stepfather. I smiled awkwardly instead.
I introduced myself to the FACS ladies. No one seemed willing to commit beyond hellos. I went the way that Kelly had gone and found a large playroom smelling of disinfectant. Kelly was sitting on the floor with a snuffling, sighing Lillian, trying to coax her into conversation with a pink teddy bear. I sat on the floor nearby, not too close. It was hard to get down that low. My ribs moved in shockingly painful ways. Linda and Sharon went to the other end of the playroom, Linda picking up a fire truck, examining it.
“Do we have to have those guys in here?” Kelly asked.
“It wasn’t my decision,” I said. “Khalid Farah put them onto me.”
“Khalid Farah!” Kelly’s eyes widened, mortified. “Jesus, Ted!”
I waved at her. “Keep your voice down.” There are drug lords, and then there are drug lords who appear in the media on murder and extortion charges often enough they become household names. The social workers and Kelly’s dude didn’t seem to have noticed. They had seated themselves at a plastic table nearby, the ladies already making furious notes. I took out the small boxed present and handed it to Kelly.
“It’s from him,” I said. “For Lil.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Well, you’re going to take it.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Please, Kelly.” I glanced at the FACS people. “Please just—”
Kelly snatched the box from me and shoved it into the pocket of her cardigan. “Ted, you can’t be hanging out with people like that.” She leaned in, threatening. “You just can’t.”
“I have a lot of bad people in my life right now, Kel.” I gave an icy smile. “And you know, it’s weird. None of these thugs, drug lords, and murderers have ever questioned my innocence. Not even for a second. My wife, on the other hand…” I shrugged.
Kelly said nothing. I rubbed my bruised eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was nasty. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She watched Lillian on the floor before her, the child’s back to me, fiddling with the teddy bear’s eyes. “Lil, look who’s here. It’s Daddy. You remember Daddy, don’t you?”
Lillian turned and looked at me. Her chin trembled.
“It’s Daddy.” I smiled. “You know me, don’t you, Boo-Boo?”
Lillian turned away from me. I pretended to scratch my temple, kept my hand up and ready in case I lost it.
“She’ll come around,” Kelly said.
“I know.”
I picked up my present and offered it, but Lillian didn’t want anything from me so I started unwrapping it myself. She watched from the corner of her eye. I extracted a green plush toy dinosaur from the paper and made him walk up and down the mat beside me. After a while I covertly shuffled sideways so that I was close to Lillian, maybe a foot or so away. I was painfully aware of the clock on the wall, ticking away the seconds of my two-hour supervised visit. My mission in those two hours was to hug my kid. I was going to get a genuine, panic-free hug if it killed me.
“I guess I’ll just play with this guy here if no one else wants to play with me,” I said casually, walking the dinosaur in a circle before me on the ground. “Oh, I’m a happy dinosaur. I’m such a nice guy. Very green, very handsome.”
Lillian was interested, but still cautious. It was my black eye that scared her, the bloodshot whites. The haphazard fishing-line stitches. I lay down on my side, ignoring the pain, propped my head on my hand.
“I’m such a happy—”
“That’s mine,” Lillian said, taking the dinosaur from my hand. Our fingers brushed. I sat up again and shifted closer.
“That’s cool. You can have it.”
“My dino-sorb,” she said, making him walk around, as I had. She looked up at me, a little twitch of a smile. The tiniest flash. “I’m a green guy. I’m a green guy.”
“She’s so big,” I told Kelly. “I can’t believe how big she is. She’s turned into a little girl.”
“They grow up fast,” Kelly sighed. “We’re onto potty training at the moment. That’s … interesting.”
I wondered if she meant “we” as in she and Lillian or she and the dude. Was this guy living with my wife, giving my daughter lollipops when she used the potty? Tucking her into bed at night, singing her songs? I looked up, found Jett giving me a stare-down. I gathered up a little plastic mouse to fiddle with. Lillian took it from me, pushed me in the chest.
“That’s mine,” she said.
“You can have it.” I smiled, took a chance and patted down her soft black curls. She didn’t twist away from me. I was getting closer to that hug.
“Can they have physical contact?” Jett winced, looked to the FACS ladies for help. “Is that allowed?”
“She’s my daughter,” I said.
“Hey, I’m just being cautious.” Jett shrugged stiffly. “If there was no cause for concern, I’m sure the court wouldn’t have ordered supervised visits.”<
br />
“Jett,” Kelly said.
“Physical contact is fine,” one of the FACS ladies said. “Whatever the custodial parent is happy with.”
The custodial parent. What did that make me? The accused parent. The charged parent. The non-custodial parent. The parent who touched his child like she was made of tissue paper, wary not to shock or horrify anyone, including the girl herself. And what did that make Jett? The stand-in parent? I wondered how long he’d been with Kelly that she would bring him here to such a tense meeting, that he would be so concerned with being the good guy in front of the FACS people. It must have been serious between them. And yet she hadn’t mentioned it at all, just landed me with it without explanation. I wondered if a warning would have made any of this easier. I didn’t want to ask Kelly about her relationship with Jett. Didn’t want to give her that; make it look like I was surprised or upset. For all she knew, I also had a girlfriend. I briefly considered pretending I did. Pathetic games.
His protest complete, Jett settled back in his chair, eyes locked on me. I tried to focus on Lillian. After another ten minutes, she’d held my hand, laughed at me, and poked me in the neck. I was getting so close to that hug, the urge to just throw caution to the wind and do it was pulsing in my arms and chest. I was afraid if I grabbed her and squeezed her the way I wanted to do, I might not only terrify her but perhaps injure her in some way. My body longed for her, a heavy hunger that set my teeth on edge. I could smell her. Baby-smell of milk and soap and something plasticky—Play-Doh, maybe crayon—trapped under her fingernails. Linda and Sharon were in the corner intent on a game of Connect Four until one of them thumped the table with a fist after losing and scattered the coins everywhere, shouting in Arabic.
I got pretty close to my hug, but when I opened my arms and offered it, Lillian threw herself at Kelly. My wife gave me a halfhearted, conciliatory smile. I think that, after the initial novelty of seeing me when we’d been so long apart, Kelly had refocused herself and remembered that it was because of me that we were here, that because of me, whether I’d intended it or not, everything she’d thought she had lined up for her future, for her daughter’s future, had been destroyed. If I’d just left the house slightly later that day. If I’d just pulled over a little further up the road. If I’d just tried harder, found something definitive that would prove I was innocent, something that would blast the case open, something that would assure everyone, even her, that I hadn’t attacked Claire Bingley. But I hadn’t done any of those things. To Kelly, this was all my fault.
