by Andrew Daddo
‘Yeah, well,’ said Dad. He had his little wheelie bag with him, and he snapped the telescopic handle shut before lobbing it onto the orange seats in the back of the car. ‘You shouldn’t be.’
‘What?’
‘All right.’
This was ominous; he was talking in algebra but I was listening in English. ‘Huh?’
‘What were you doing letting your little sister walk home from the park by herself at night? What’s that about? Your mum told me, she was furious. I’m furious. Anything could have happened to her. What were you thinking?’
‘Um, I don’t know,’ I said. It wasn’t very convincing and even though I knew it’d piss him off I didn’t have another answer. Not then, anyway, not when I’d been blindsided by the conversation. I thought I was done with this already, so why was it coming back?
‘You don’t know? I’m at work, constantly. I work here, I go away to work, then I come home and work some more. I’m at these conferences busting my arse to make sure that you’ve got the stuff you need and the stuff you want. That bike in the middle of the lawn, the one that’s been there for about a week. The frisbee. The footies and the basketballs and cricket balls in the garden. That brand-new skateboard at the front door I nearly broke my neck on this morning. All that shit – I got that for you. It feels like my job is to flog myself so you can leave your shit everywhere. And now we can include your sister in the list of things you’re happy to leave behind. You show her the same lack of respect you show everything else by making her walk home alone in the black of night when any arsehole can grab hold of her and do her harm. And what were you doing? You don’t know.’
‘It wasn’t that dark,’ I said.
Dad looked around like there were alarms going off all around him. ‘It wasn’t that dark? Oh, sorry. That makes it okay, does it? Because peddos don’t grab kids when it’s not that dark?’ He looked at his watch then back at me. ‘It shouldn’t matter if it’s nine o’clock in the morning. You get your sister home safe, whatever the time, right? She’s a kid. She’s seven, or eight. She’s eight, right? It doesn’t even matter how old she is, she’s too young to walk home by herself and you’re old enough to know better. What the hell is going on with you? I taught you better than that! Your job, Dylan, your job is to look after your sisters. And your mother, for that matter. Your job is to be present and to think about them and take care of them, especially when I’m not around. That’s your job, Dylan. And you have to start doing it now!’
He looked at his watch again, then back at the house. ‘Smarten up, boy.’
Then he got in the car.
It felt like someone had dusted me with pepper and jammed a tennis ball down my throat. I couldn’t swallow and I wouldn’t wipe my eyes – he wasn’t going to get the pleasure of seeing me cry.
He started the car but stayed in the driveway working away at his phone. I walked off, almost making it to the front door before he tooted the horn. Instead of turning, I just kept walking. He hit the horn again, harder and longer, but I thought, I’m buggered if I’m going to get another spray today.
After slamming the front door, the tears just fell out of me. The tap was on; the seal broken. I was gone.
The door opened behind me. ‘Are you kidding me?’ said Dad. ‘I just wanted to say goodbye. How up yerself are ya?’ I could hear the joking in his voice, as if everything was peachy and forgotten. He spun me around to face him. ‘Now you’re crying? What are you crying for? What are you, fifteen? You’re too old to cry, boy. Man up, would ya? Don’t be a fricken sook.’
But I couldn’t stop. The floodgates were open, the torrent was loose and even though I knew the right thing was to wipe my cheeks and shrug it all off, I couldn’t. Instead, my head hung forward and I covered my face with my hands, and great, hulking sobs fell out of me.
Dad left me like that. He said something about not being sure what to do but he hoped I’d be out of tears by the time he got back. He said, ‘I’m going to miss my plane if I don’t go,’ but that’s all I can really remember. He said other stuff, too, but I was done listening. And he squeezed my shoulder. Just one squeeze on the right side, his palm was on the fleshy part at the very top of my arm and his thumb dug into that fragile bit under my collarbone – it was harder than it had to be.
‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘Look after the girls.’
I remember that squeeze, because it was so different to the other kind he used to give, the kind that took care of all of me, that engulfed me and held me tight to his belly. He used to rub my hair and say I should enjoy it now because it wouldn’t be there forever. He used to say there’d be muscles on my arms one day, and hair on my chest and power in my back.
‘Here, mate. These bits’ll swell with authority and strength and won’t the girls love ’em?’ And he’d hug me and give my back a mighty rub.
How good would it be to go back to kissing him goodnight when he tucked me in, to kicking the football or going to the nets to play cricket? I wanted to bowl at him when he wasn’t wearing pads, or have him bowl at me when I was. He used to let me sit on his lap and steer when he took the car out of the garage, he’d push me onto waves on my foam surfboard and give me horsie rides to bed. Dad used to read to me before I had to read to him.
He used to be a safe place to cuddle into.
I just wanted to be able to tell him what was going on without being made to feel like a pussy, but it’s pretty hard to do that when there’s only time for a hard squeeze on the shoulder.
He’s changed, and I don’t know when that happened.
The front door shut, finally giving me a chance to breathe.
‘Did you see your dad?’ Mum asked. She came past me and was looking outside through the glass panel in the front door. ‘He was in a real rush, he had to go or he was going to miss his . . . Are you okay?’
‘Fine,’ I said.
‘Dylan? What’s wrong?’
I hadn’t quite managed to get myself back together.
‘Nothing, Mum. It’s nothing.’
‘Oh, Dylan,’ she said. And she got hold of me and pulled me towards her.
I felt like butter on hot toast, I just dripped onto her. And cried. I could have cried for Australia that day. I got hold of her and held her tight and did what she said and let it go. All of it. ‘Shhhhh,’ she went into my ear. ‘Shhhhh, shhhh, shhhh. It’s all right, Dylan. Let it out. Good boy. Shhhhhhhh.’ She was gently rocking me, her arms around me, her hands alternately rubbing and patting my shoulders and back. ‘Shhhhhhh,’ she went, very quietly. ‘Good boy. You’re my good boy, Dylan.’
I reckon I would have been all right if she hadn’t caught me at the door like that.
It would have been easy enough to bury everything and tuck it away and be pissed off for a while, but Mum’s cooing brought me utterly undone.
My heart was aching, and I didn’t have a clue how I’d got like this.
Gradually the fire went out, I ran out of steam. It’s like I’d hit a hill without a run up and didn’t have the energy to take it on. I just hung there on Mum, exhausted and sniffing. She gave me another rub on the back and whispered my name a few times. Mum made me feel special. But she was crying now, I could feel it more than anything else. These weren’t the great racking sobs that had burst out of me, more a feeble weep.
‘Dylan, Dylan, Dylan,’ she said again, gently rubbing my back. Finally, I thought. I could let it out and let it go and empty this sack of poison I’d been dragging about, and Mum was in a mood to understand and listen. Unlike Dad, she was here and present and paying attention. If anyone knew how to deal with girls and expectations and open questions like, ‘Do you wanna . . .?’ it was Mum. We hadn’t actually talked in ages. The more she asked about things and what was going on with friends and girls, the less likely I was to answer.
But I was ready now.
I just needed two deep breaths. Just get the breathing under control and start at the start. That’s where I was at, two bre
aths away from launch, two short moments from sharing and understanding, and the inevitable, ‘Oh, Dylan, you’re such a funny boy. Why didn’t you tell me? You’re silly, you shouldn’t keep this stuff to yourself.’
She’d ruffle my hair and make me feel better and a bit stupid for keeping it all to myself. Mum might break into her secret stash of chocolate, or we’d make lasagna and she’d offer me a splash of red wine and make some joke about a shitty day deserving a little clarity. ‘Get it?’ she’d say, and I’d shake my head and she’d say something about red wine being called claret in the old days. ‘Clarety? Get it now?’ And I still wouldn’t get it but it wouldn’t really matter because for the first time in forever we’d be talking and it’d be about me and she’d be paying attention. Two breaths away from the safety of my mum.
I sucked a big one in and let it whistle out through my teeth.
Where to start? I could say things had been pretty weird lately, at home and at school. She’d be excited about the girl but worried about Hamish. Then she’d want to see the burn in my bum and make a fuss and that’d be fine, I suppose. Mum’d say, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt you.’ And I’d let her get away with it. Being wheeled around the change rooms by Hamish Banning had hurt, but the thought of Ryan telling anyone that he’d found me taking a picture of my bum would hurt a lot more. If I got tagged a small-dick, that’d shame me forever.
With my eyes closed and my chin over Mum’s shoulder, I dragged another big one down past my shuddering larynx into my chest. Mum held tight. It was good. I felt cherished and safe.
It’d been so long.
‘Dylan,’ she cooed. ‘I’m so sorry, honey. He told you, didn’t he? You weren’t meant to find out like this. He wasn’t meant to say, not yet. Not today. I’m so sorry, Dylan. I don’t know what’s wrong with him.’
She went limp in my arms. She was still standing up, but it was like she’d lost her strength, her form. Now it was me rubbing her back.
‘It’ll be okay, Dylan. We’ll be fine. I promise.’
We’ll be fine? How’d we just gone from me to we?
‘What wasn’t Dad meant to tell me, Mum?’
She pulled away from me but left her hands on my chest, still patting, almost drumming. Her mouth tightened, but her dewy eyes bored into mine.
‘He didn’t say anything?’
‘Yeah. No. Yeah, of course. He kicked my arse for leaving Ronnie at the park, but I thought we were done with that, so . . . I don’t think it’s fair to keep bringing old stuff up. How long do you guys get to do that? I said sorry, didn’t I? If I get cross about something I get told to deal with it, but you and Dad get to ream me over and over again. It’s not fair.’
I was worried about a new wave of tears rising within me.
Mum straightened, stepping back, gaining strength. Her eyes changed, too. They narrowed, hardened even. ‘But you’re crying, Dylan. You’re really crying, and you never cry. You never do much of anything. You don’t laugh hard and you don’t cry hard, you’re just . . . level.’
That was nice, I suppose. Being called level. There was worse than level. ‘That’s really all your father said?’
‘Pretty much. What else is he meant to have said?’ I felt better now, like I’d been tossed about by a decent wave. The tears were gone, and already I was a little relieved I hadn’t talked about what was going on at school or what happened at the pool. It seemed kind of stupid. ‘Oh, he said he was leaving and to look after the girls. That’s pretty much the last thing he said before he took off.’
I didn’t say anything about him calling me a sook.
Mum’s chin took on a life of its own and her eyes filled.
‘Mum?’
She patted my chest again, her hands a little cupped so they made that horsie, cloppy noise.
‘Mmmmm, nothing,’ went Mum, putting her arms around me and laying her head on my shoulder. I’m taller than her now, but only just. ‘It’s nothing, really.’
‘Mum?’
‘Oh God. You’ll find out eventually. Your father is leaving.’
‘I know, he just left. That’s what I said.’
‘He’s not coming back.’
We sat on the bottom step for ages.
It took a while to understand what she was actually talking about, not because she was crying, but because it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Dad always comes back, I’d said.
And Mum was, like, ‘Well, not this time. I told him not to bother.’ With her elbows on her knees and head in her hands, Mum ran her fingers through her hair over and over and over. She was stressed; it’s what she does.
‘Why would you say that to Dad?’
‘Because, Dylan, we’re broken and I don’t know how to fix us.’ She shook her head and blew air up her face. ‘I’ll tell you because you’re old enough to know, but you can’t tell the girls. Not yet. Your father and I will tell you all together, but the truth, so you know, is this. Your stupid mid-life crisis father’s got a special friend he’s been texting from a phone he keeps in his golf bag. And stupid him left his golf clubs in my car. And like he does with his dirty clothes and his shit that haunts this house, he was too lazy to take his clubs out of my car. So, when I’m coming home from work, I hear this noise coming from the back of the car, it’s like someone having sex back there. It’s this woman’s voice going, “Oh, yeah. Oh, baby. Oh, yeah.” What a troll. And I think it’s on the radio so I don’t think much about it, but then it happens again. So I turn the radio off as it stops. Then I get a text from your father saying can I please put his clubs into the garage ASAP because they’re really expensive and someone might steal them if they see them in the car and they’re not insured and “thanks, darling, thaaaaaaanks, XXOO.” What an arse.’
Mum had stopped crying now, but she was still working away at her hair with both hands, fanning it out, letting it fall.
‘It was weird. As soon as I got that text I knew something was going on. So I pulled over and waited for the “Oh, yeah, Oh, baby. Oh, yeah,” to come back, but it never did. Then I got your father’s golf clubs out of the back and went through the pockets. There was a phone in his shoe. On the screen it said, two new messages from HCW: “How about it?” and “When’s our next conference, Studley?”’
I had no idea what to say to Mum.
‘Don’t cheat, Dylan. If you’re going to cheat, leave. Show respect. Your father has no respect. I left his precious golf clubs on the side of the road and came home.’
The cogs in my head were cranking through Mum’s story, but there was so much going on it was hard to make sense of it. ‘Did you really leave his golf clubs by the side of the road?’
‘Yes, and his shoes and his hat and his umbrella and anything else that was in there.’
‘He’ll lose his shit when he finds out.’
‘Oh, oopsie. I really couldn’t care, Dylan. He’s going to lose a lot more than his shit, too. His girlfriend can get him some new clubs. I’m sorry, Dylan,’ she said again. ‘It really was never meant to be anything like this. Ever.’
Mum said it was better if no one knew about it until she was able to process the news properly. She needed to come up with a story, or a reason or something logical so she wasn’t shamed into being the left-behind wife for some manky little executive assistant with big tits. Dad had another conference to go to, but when she said it this time she made little inverted commas with her fingers. So, if this wasn’t a work conference, maybe the other conferences he was always going to weren’t conferences either. I’m not even sure what he does. He works for an insurance company, I know that. Dad either sells insurance, or he has a team or is part of a team or runs a team or something and they sell the insurance, I think. He’s busy. Always.
Now it was Mum’s turn to suck in the big breaths and straighten up. ‘He is going to kill me if he finds out I’ve told you what’s happened. The girls don’t need to know, especially Ronnie. She won’t understand, a
nyway. It’ll just make a mess of Hayley, who’s messy enough already. She knows something’s going on, but she doesn’t need to know it’s this. Okay?’
I nodded.
‘Okay, Dylan?’ She finally took her head out of her hands and looked at me. Mum looked awful. She looked like those pictures of crack addicts we get shown at school. The skin around her eyes was glowing red and her hair was all over the place. Worst of all was the look in her eyes. Mum was shattered. And it wasn’t just in her eyes, it was her whole body; her head seemed to hang off her neck and there was a huge, hopeless slope to her shoulders. She looked lost. I’ve never thought of her as a loser before.
I gave her a hug and left her there, on the bottom step, with her head back in her hands. When I reached the landing at the top, I turned to look at her. She was crying again.
I never got to tell her the stuff I wanted to, but now it didn’t seem to matter so much.
We had pizza for dinner that night, which was a pretty big deal for a school night – usually it was just Fridays or Sundays for take away.
Mum stayed in bed. Ronnie gave her a big cuddle and came out saying even though Mum looked all red like she’d been crying, she definitely hadn’t been because it was just a cold that was so bad it made the snot come out of her eyes as well.
Hayley took Mum some pizza and when she flopped back onto the couch she asked me what was wrong with her.
‘She’s got snotty eyes,’ laughed Ronnie.
‘What else has she got?’ Hayley said to me.
‘Dunno, she’s okay, I think. She’s tired, maybe.’
Hayley grabbed another piece of pizza and through a mouthful said, ‘What’d you do to her? You were the only one home this afternoon. Something’s happened.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ I bit back.
‘Yeah, right,’ she said. ‘I’ll find out.’
Mum and Dad’s problems had nothing to do with me. They’d seemed fine, like they’d always been. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they snapped, sometimes they yelled. Same, same. Dad played X-box, Mum played Facebook. Dad drank red wine, Mum drank white. Mum tried to make things fun, Dad was basically grumpy when he was home, which was nearly never.
