Simmering Season

by Jenn J. McLeod

  ‘Grow up, Luke.’

  ‘For God’s sake, you two.’ Fiona snatched the container of sweeteners away from Luke. ‘I’m not upset, okay?’ If she was—and it wasn’t so much upset as angry right now—there was no way Fiona was going to let herself fall apart in public. ‘I just don’t see the point. What’s going to Calingarry Crossing supposed to achieve? I’m not my mother. I hardly need to go in search of happiness, or experience some great epiphany to know what’s important in my life. It’s all right here, in Sydney, with you guys. I don’t have to go running off to some hick town to find myself.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know who your real father is, babe?’

  She sighed. ‘Why? Is being rejected and lied to by the parents I have not enough?’

  For years Fiona had managed to bottle her anger and resentment. Years of pent-up frustration at being shipped off to boarding school and summer camps because she’d had a mother who couldn’t deal with her own life, much less her daughter’s. Amber Bailey-Blair—as her mother had insisted she be known, as if a hyphenated name elevated a person to some superior status—had been a shit-of-a mother. Fiona had moved out of the family’s Potts Point apartment and into Molly’s Bondi flat the day after her eighteenth birthday. Not long after that, and without warning, Amber walked away from her life of plenty to return to the obscure town where she’d grown up. Not that Fiona had known about her mother’s country roots at the time. Amber, it seemed, had kept lots of secrets—many even from Phillip, who’d been just as hurt and confused.

  Amber abandoned them both.

  ‘And now you’re just taking her back, as if she never left,’ Fiona had said the day Phillip announced her mother was coming home.

  ‘She’s been through a lot,’ he explained. ‘She wants to make it up to us, but she needs our help.’

  What about what I need? Fiona wanted to scream. Why was it always all about Amber?

  ‘Promise me you’ll try.’

  Fiona did promise her father. She and her mother had even been making progress until a few days ago when the aneurism burst inside Amber’s brain.

  Gone.

  Just like that.

  Amber had been yelling at Fiona’s grandfather, Jack, when it happened. Fiona had stayed hidden in the hallway, listening to father and daughter firing personal pot-shots at each other—Jack with his angry accusations and a defiant Amber defending her daughter, defending Fiona like never before. But the words so painfully carved into her memory were about Phillip. We all know the truth. Phillip is not Fiona’s father. Who was the lucky lad that knocked up my daughter? Will Travelli was always my bet.

  Phillip! The man who had cared for her and nurtured her when her mother was too preoccupied, the man who’d provided for Fiona, spoilt her, called her his little princess, treating her like one—always. How could he not be her real father?

  ‘Fifi, are you listening to me?’ Luke snapped his fingers twice close to her face.

  Fiona swatted his hand away. ‘Yes, I’m listening. As if I have a freaking choice.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘I asked what makes you think you’d be rejected? Maybe the bloke doesn’t even know you exist.’

  ‘If I can’t get a straight answer out of my father … I mean, Phillip … what chance have I got getting answers from complete strangers in a town I never knew existed? Oh, I know. I could design a banner and hang it in the main street. Even better, Luke, why don’t I set up a Facebook page? I can call it: ‘Help Foolish Fiona Find Her Father’ and snap a selfie looking all pathetic and plead for likes.’

  ‘So you and your dad have talked?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Barely.’ Fiona pictured the normally unflappable Phillip—the man whose unwavering optimism and smile she’d relied on as a child—sitting in his darkened bedroom sobbing. Twice she’d let herself into the apartment and listened. Twice she’d left again.

  ‘Fi, sweetie,’ Molly interrupted. ‘If you want the opinion of the person who has known you the longest … I say forget it.’

  Easy for Molly to say. The Myers’ family history was well documented, her lineage an entrée to a world Fiona sometimes struggled to fit into. Now she understood why she struggled and why even her name—Fiona—seemed so out of place among the Savannahs, the Siennas, the Tiffanys and the Taylors. She wasn’t Phillip’s daughter at all. She was just the daughter of a drunk—a sad, secret-keeping, prescription-addicted liar and a stranger.

  ‘This is Fi’s decision, Molly,’ Luke said.

  ‘Are you for real?’ Molly fired back. ‘What would she do in a dusty country town? She wouldn’t fit in there at all.’

  Wouldn’t fit in? Fiona twitched at her best friend’s words, a bubble of anger floating up and bursting out of her mouth. ‘I can hardly blow in and announce “I’m here to find my freaking father”. I’m pretty sure that would be the best way to piss off the locals, Luke. Oh, and Molly, maybe I’d fit in just fine.’

  ‘Calm down, Fi. Your mother was organising that event for her old school, right?’ Luke asked. ‘And your grandfather got you that marketing job, didn’t he?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, makes sense to me that you’ve got some skills that might come in handy.’

  ‘I write freaking ad copy and jingles, Luke. Not sure they need either of those for a small-town school reunion.’

  ‘That’s not the point. You’re there offering to help and they were your mother’s friends. They’ll hardly turn you away. Who knows what you’ll find out just by turning up.’

  ‘Oh, yes, and I made a great impression on those friends at Mum’s freaking funeral.’

  ‘Fifi, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.’

  ‘Shut up, Luke, she can talk any freakin’ way she wants,’ Molly said.

  ‘Charming, Mol,’ Luke mumbled, turning his back deliberately on her. ‘Now listen to me, Fifi—’

  ‘She doesn’t have to listen to you. You’re not her father.’

  ‘Oh, why not be my father, Luke!’ Fiona cut in. ‘There’s an idea.’

  ‘He’s almost old enough,’ Molly mumbled.

  ‘Quit it. Both of you.’ Fiona slammed both palms on the table, frightening a bark out of the little dog in a handbag under an adjacent chair. The bickering was driving her crazy. ‘Apparently I have two fathers already, Luke. Why not three? The more the merrier. Isn’t that how the saying goes?’

  ‘Calm down, Fifi.’ Luke kept his voice soft, but there was no disguising the clenched jaw or the way his deliberately slow, controlled breathing expanded his chest. His hands were on the table now, one curled into a fist, the other toying with the chunky gold charm bracelet on Fiona’s wrist, a twenty-first-birthday gift from Phillip. ‘Let’s all calm down.’

  She nodded obediently. The entire café was already whispering about them. She didn’t want her relationship woes captured on some loser’s iPhone and uploaded on Facebook for the world to see.

  ‘You’re pure class, Fi,’ Luke continued. ‘Who’s to say there’s not a wealthy property owner out there in Calingarry Crossing with your DNA?’

  ‘Always comes back to money eh, Lukey?’ Molly huffed, snatching her iPhone off the table and springing up so fast her chair fell backwards, smashing onto the footpath. ‘You’re a sleazebag, you know that?’

  ‘Love you too, Miss Molly.’ Luke blew a kiss and leaned down to pick up the chair.

  ‘Molly, wait!’ Fiona looped her head through the strap of her macramé beach bag and prepared to stand up, only to feel the grip of Luke’s hand on hers.

  ‘Let her go, Fifi. What would little Miss Molly Millionaire understand about what you’ve been through? The biggest struggle she’s ever had is choosing which shade of bimbo to dye her hair.’ He played with Fiona’s fringe, tugging at the perfect strawberry blonde corkscrew curl dangling over one cheek. ‘I understand you, babe,’ he cooed, taking control of the wayward strand and tucking it behind her ear. ‘I’m the only one who truly under
stands you. Stick with me, kiddo.’

  3

  Dan

  The death knock.

  They sure as hell don’t teach you how to do it at Police College.

  No lecture can ever prepare you for that moment: the flash of recognition, the worried eyes, the first signs of life slowly draining away from another father’s face when you speak the well-rehearsed and too often said words, ‘I’m sorry to have to inform you that your son—or daughter, or only reason for living—died in a head-on crash this evening’. And not just died, but died alone, in the dark, on the side of a road, calling your name.

  Dan Ireland dropped into the passenger seat and reefed the door of his unmarked police car shut. ‘Shit!’

  ‘You can say that again. Geez, that sucked. Did you see the birthday cake and the big “Happy Seventeenth” balloons in the living room?’

  ‘Yeah, I saw.’

  Dan didn’t dare look at the face of his young offsider, staring instead into the lights of an oncoming vehicle, imagining what it must feel like to slam into a half-tonne of speeding metal.

  Or a wall.

  Or a tree.

  Dan knew how it felt from the other side, to view the end result of a high-speed crash. Images from tonight’s scene played like a horror movie in his head. He’d seen the results too many times before—every bone-breaking, skin-splitting, life-destroying injury. Dan didn’t understand why they didn’t show that on the nightly news, plaster those pictures on roadside billboards and teach kids about that in schools. Maybe such images would slow the idiots down. Maybe if someone had shown Dan twenty-three years ago he wouldn’t now see the scars each time he looked in a mirror—the result of what happened when an invincible teenager and a dirt bike tangled with a barbed-wire fence at a hundred kph. He’d been so close to dying that day. Sometimes he wished he had.

  Now, here he was again tonight, the bearer of bad news.

  Another death knock.

  Another statistic.

  Another seventeen-year-old—gone.

  These days Dan witnessed, sometimes on a daily basis, what happens to other kids’ faces when they weren’t as lucky as he was: noses smashed on steering wheels, teeth rammed through lips like a grotesque stapler. Even when Dan found a picture in a wallet—a photo ID or something—the swelling and discolouration distorting the person’s face often wouldn’t let their own mother see any resemblance. Swelling and bruising stretches the skin so unnaturally tight it shines like a wax figure, with all those familiar facial features rearranged, the cruel combination like a Picasso abstract coming to life before Dan’s eyes.

  Then death.

  Only the images didn’t die. They lived on in his head, a kind of mental photo album of the dead or dying, while most of the blokes Dan knew kept mental albums of their kids. Dan didn’t want to think about how many times he’d been offered a transfer out of the crash investigation unit: better rank, better salary, better hours. His wife would’ve been happy. Lucky for him, Tracy never knew how many times he’d said no to a job that would have meant more time at home being a husband and father. She’d have killed him. Who would blame her? The courts would acquit her of all murder charges, of course. No jury would convict the woman once they heard her story. Justifiable homicide? No question.

  ‘Poor bastard took it hard,’ said Dan’s offsider while indicating to merge into a queue of peak-hour traffic. ‘The mother went white, like she was going to pass out on the spot. I’ve never had the same reaction twice, that’s for sure. You would’ve done it all a few hundred more times than me, and seen it all prob’ly. The dad’s fist did a good job of that plasterboard wall. Geez, that must hurt. Can’t say I’ve ever had cause to attack a wall to know.’ The constable gripped each fist one after the other and squeezed, as if imagining the pain, but the sound of crunching knuckles while stuck in a traffic snarl was not helping Dan’s mood.

  ‘Hey, both hands on the wheel, thanks,’ Dan chastised, turning away and catching the faintest reflection of his face in the passenger window.

  He pressed his fingers against the old scar on his cheek, rubbing the one spot up and down three times before tracing the jagged line from the nick in his earlobe, over his jawline and to the underside of his chin. Yes, he knew pain, both physical and emotional, not that he shared that with his young colleague.

  ‘Can’t think why you wanted to come with me,’ the constable said as he merged the police car into the fast-flowing lane. ‘Hey, don’t get me wrong. Happy to have you along. It’s just most crash guys leave this part of the job to us uniform blokes.’

  Dan might have replied, ‘I only tag along when they’re teenagers’, but that would lead to more questions; all coppers were good at drilling for details. He instead concentrated on the hand currently flicking the cover of his leather ID holder with OCD regularity—open and closed, open and closed, open and closed—and on the tiny motto on the badge: Culpam Poena Premit Comes.

  ‘Punishment Follows Close On Guilt. Do they still teach you that in Police College?’ Dan asked.

  ‘Yeah. Rings a bell.’

  The irony was that Dan had been punishing himself for years simply by doing his job; facing another family to tell them their treasured son or daughter or loved one was gone, watching the spirit of a parent slowly seep away, like the father tonight. That was a punishment for Dan that followed close on twenty-three years of guilt. This bloody job didn’t let the wounds mend, nor erase the memory of his mate’s family at the funeral all those years ago. Even from his hiding place, behind the giant buttress roots of the fig tree dwarfing the tiny stone church, Dan had seen their pain. Incidents like tonight didn’t just reopen the same old wounds. They salted them.

  The same memories also stopped Dan from going home to Calingarry Crossing. Why he’d told Tracy he’d think about the bloody school reunion he didn’t understand. Dan Ireland didn’t believe in going backwards.

  ‘You’re in an eighty zone. Reckon you can drive this thing any faster?’ he stirred the young constable. ‘Any slower, mate, and you’d best put her in reverse.’

  ‘Someone’s keen to knock off and start their holidays, then. Geez, can’t wait ’til I’ve clocked up enough years for paid leave. Big plans? Pacific cruise with the missus maybe?’

  ‘Bugger off! How old do you think I am? Not that bloody old.’ The spurt of humour was short-lived as the reality hit Dan. He had no idea what he would do with so much time on his hands, except maybe get to know his kids better. ‘Just need some time out is all. The last few years have been a bastard, and family duty calls.’

  ‘Wives, huh?’ the constable quipped.

  ‘Ohhh yeah!’

  ‘You gotta be doing something, though. Maybe hook up the caravan and take a road trip.’

  ‘No caravan, but there’s a school reunion in the town where I grew up.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘About eight or nine hours north-west of here. You wouldn’t know it. Calingarry Crossing.’

  ‘Sounds small.’

  ‘You’ve got no idea.’

  ‘Not sounding too enthusiastic about it, boss. What’s up?’ He landed a playful thump on Dan’s arm. ‘A little Georgie Porgie thing going on back there, or what?’

  ‘What are you raving on about, dickhead?’ Dan was only forty; why did he have so much trouble keeping up with his young colleague? Something that happened a bit these days.

  ‘A little bit of that Georgie Porgie puddin’ and pie, knocked up a girl then said bye, bye. Am I close? Is that why you’re not too keen about going back to face the music?’

  Dan’s answer was his all-too-frequent-these-days cynical snort. If only it was as simple as that. He settled into the seat and closed his eyes to another bottleneck of traffic forming up ahead.

  ‘Come on, have a drink with me,’ the constable said. ‘We deserve one.’

  ‘Tempting, but no can do. I’ve got kids expecting me.’

  Dan loved his kids. On nights when he couldn’t s
top thinking about the last crash site he’d attended, or the last parent he’d had to face, Dan’s favourite place would be in the kids’ room, on the floor between their beds, listening to their breathing while they slept. They were the other reason Dan did what he did—keeping the world safe from bad drivers and bad people. He owed it to Mike and Emily. His kids had saved him fourteen years ago, not that they knew how they’d changed his life.

  Lucky for Dan, he did.

  ‘G’day kids.’

  ‘Hey Dad.’ Barely lifting their heads from their mobile phones, the fourteen-year-old twins called back in almost perfect unison from their seated position on the front doorstep.

  ‘Where’s your mother?’

  ‘She called a while ago,’ his son said. ‘The train broke down. She said we don’t have to wait.’

  ‘Right. Dinner then?’

  ‘Pizza! Pizza!’ Emily pleaded.

  ‘No. Maccas,’ Mike said.

  ‘No way. We had Maccas last time.’

  ‘Okay, okay, how’s this?’ Dan rubbed his palms together. ‘Put the phones away and it will be pizza entrée, Maccas mains and a choc-top at the movies for dessert. Howzat?’

  ‘You’re the greatest, Dad,’ the choir of two sang as they raced each other for the front passenger seat of Dan’s car.

  ‘Buckle up.’ Dan glanced at his children and tried not to think about the parents tonight with their cold dinner, wilting balloons and unopened birthday presents.

  ‘Can’t we go away with you and Mum?’ asked Emily from the back seat as Dan steered the car into an empty space in the Pizza Hut car park.

  ‘Why would you want to go all the way out there? It’s just a small country town. A hot, dusty country town at this time of year if I remember rightly.’

  ‘You and Mum grew up there.’

  ‘We did, yes, a long time ago now. Come on you two.’ Dan engaged the Pajero’s central locking and herded his pair across the car park. ‘Your mother and I talked and we didn’t think you’d be interested bunking down at our old friends’ place. They own a farm so you’d be up before the sun. Doubt there’ll be any Austar or Foxtel either. Might be mobile phone reception, if you’re lucky. But, if you want to come …’