Insecure

by Ainslie Paton

  A woman pressed a photograph into his hand. Buster, young and laughing, pushing him on a swing, when he was about five years old. She was so beautiful it made his hand shake to hold the image, and once in his pocket it had a kind of buzz about it that made him want to keep checking it was still there.

  Dillon refused to remove his sunglasses, not even in the dark, cool church. Standing in the sun, Mace wished he’d thought to bring his, but his short-term memory was shot to hell. He couldn’t remember whether he’d had breakfast or when he’d last spoken to Nolan, and he hadn’t been at work for days.

  He should care about that. He still needed the job since the Summers-Denby investment committee knocked back their proposal and they were back where they started. No surprise. And no excuse to be bitter about it.

  Instead, he seemed to be able to recall every conversation he’d ever had with Buster, big and small, trivial and important. The sound of her voice before the Parkinson’s destroyed it, unwavering, strong, but gentle too, filled his ears, distracted his nights.

  “We should’ve done a proper wake, you know tea and sandwiches with the crusts cut off,” said Dillon.

  She’d have liked that too, but he hadn’t thought to organise it, and Dillon who’d thought of everything else had missed that one thing.

  “All these people, Mace. Shit, who’d have guessed she knew so many people.”

  She was older than they’d both thought. She must’ve done that thing women do and count backwards. He wished he’d known that before he found her will, her birth certificate. There were a lot of things he wished he’d thought to ask her, tell her, promise her.

  He didn’t know how long he should stand by the graveside; until everyone left, or was it all right for him to leave now. He wanted to get out of the sun. He wanted a drink, something hard that burned his throat.

  “Mace.” Dillon shook his arm and he looked up to see a man in a dark suit, no tie, and the suit has seen some wear. Maybe a former colleague or someone from the library.

  “I’m Don Turnbull. I was a friend of your grandmother’s. You’re her grandson?”

  Whoever this was, he hadn’t been in touch for a long time, because everyone here knew Buster well enough to know Mace and Dillon by name.

  He put his hand out and they shook, and Dillon introduced himself as Buster’s spare grandson and confused the heck out of Don.

  “I wanted to pay my respects. She was a wonderful person.”

  “Where did you know her from?” Dillon asked.

  “I, ah.” Don stumbled. “It was a long time ago. I’m very sorry.” He turned to go.

  There was something about this man. He was different to the other people, male for a start, and inordinately upset for someone who hadn’t been in touch for decades. Mace called after him, “Where did you know Buster?”

  Don turned back. “Buster?”

  “That was her grandmother name.”

  Don smiled. “That suits her. She was always so full of mischief and no one’s fool. I guess she never mentioned me.”

  Dillon answered, “No,” for them both.

  “We.” Don rubbed his hand over his face. “I’m not sure you want to know.”

  There were things about Buster Mace could never know now; this was one thing he could. “I do.”

  Don coughed, obviously uncomfortable. “I loved Alicia very much and she loved me too. It was a long time ago.”

  Mace took an involuntary step backwards. “Go on.”

  “Please,” said Dillon.

  Don’s eyes cut sideways. “We had an affair.” He turned his head away. “Your mother was alive then, a teenager, and Alicia was alone.” He made eye contact again. “I fell in love with her and I was going to...” His lips compressed in a thin line, smothering his words but not the wretched look on his face.

  Dillon put a hand to Don’s shoulder, briefly. “Going to what?”

  “I was married and I was going to leave my wife. We weren’t happy, hadn’t been for a long time, but I was a drinker back then and—well, I crashed the car and my wife,” Don ran a hand over his face, “she was crippled. I couldn’t leave her then, I was responsible. I just couldn’t.

  Mace’s chest felt so tight he pressed a hand to his sternum, looking for relief.

  “I only saw Alicia twice more after that. She told me I was doing the right thing. But it always felt like the most wretched thing a man could do was not be with the woman he loved.”

  “Fuck,” said Dillon

  Don gave a weak smile. “I guess it’s a shock, me saying all that.”

  Mace took a breath and it hurt. “You said you saw her twice more.”

  “Yes, when my wife died, I contacted her. You were in primary school. I hoped we might—”

  “You wanted to get back with her,” said Dillon.

  “I did. But she was busy at work. Your mother was struggling with her health, Mace, and I guess I hadn’t proven very reliable. She didn’t have time for me. She said she still loved me,” he dropped his chin and swung his face towards the grave, “that I was the love of her life, but she had her own responsibilities and she didn’t see how we could fit together.”

  “Jesus.” Dillon turned in a small circle and Don’s gaze re-centred on them.

  “I think it was the saddest day of my life, until now, knowing she’s not still around, and happy with her choices.”

  Mace put his hand over his mouth. The sun, no food, too many people to talk to, he felt dizzy. The one thing he and Buster had fought about was drinking. Buster thought it was evil and he’d thought she was crazy, old-fashioned, overreacting, and the few occasions he’d rocked home drunk, she’d been furious enough with him to scare him sober.

  She barely stood as high as his chest but she’d laid into him one time with a leather belt and another time threw his car keys over the neighbour’s back fence. He’d moderated his drinking until getting shitfaced every weekend wasn’t what he wanted to do anymore, and that was partly him and a lot about her. And now he knew why it’d triggered her rage, and he ached for the sting of those red welts she’d put on his chest and arms anew.

  “You should know hardly a day went past these last forty years I haven’t thought about her.”

  He turned his back on Don, fearful of being sick. He heard Dillon dealing with it and he tried to get the rolling in his gut under control, but his chest was so tight, the new suit coat two sizes too small, and the sun was so hot. He had to sit down, but there was nowhere. He stumbled over to a big Moreton Bay fig tree and leaned his shoulder against it.

  Buster had been loved and loved greatly and she’d given it up for his mother and for him. She chosen crappy paperback romances over the real thing. He couldn’t stand it; he had to get out of here.

  He reeled around and was blinded by the sun, making his eyes water, he blinked to clear his vision and staggered over a tree root. A hand to his arm, steadying him, then to the back of his neck, holding tight. The bump of Dillon’s forehead against his that made his eyes shut tight. His own hand to Dillon’s neck, both of them breathing heavily.

  “It’s okay, dude. It’s okay.”

  He tried to pull away, but Dillon wasn’t an asthmatic weakling anymore, those fingers at his neck dug in. “Let it go, Mace.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Not happening. You and me. There’s always been you and me, and I miss her too. She was the best. Now we have to go do what we said we’d do. All those times she heard us talk, big talk, trash talk, then we got smarter and started making sense. She believed in us. She never stopped thinking we were going to run the world. You and me, Mace. It doesn’t matter that we don’t have the money, we’ll get it. We’ll get through this. That’s what we do now.”

  He stopped struggling, all the fight gone out of him. He let the tears come, let them wash down his face and bring the pain with them, and Dillon stopped him from falling over.

  18: Perspective

  He was untucked and once he took the ca
p off, in need of a haircut, but Bryan looked happy. He wasn’t Mace, but Jacinta was pleased to see him all the same.

  The fact she thought for a nanosecond Bryan was Mace spoke to the particular madness she was feeling. There was no reason for Mace to show up here. She couldn’t have been clearer he’d be unwelcome, and she’d given him no cause to think she’d softened on that; no call, no email, no catching him in the foyer, not even a simple private text message.

  Bryan threw his cap on a chair and stalked inside. “I’ve been waiting for hours. You didn’t answer your phone.”

  “Left it in the office.”

  “That explains that then.”

  He studied her, a wry grin on his face. “We never were a hugging family, but you look like you could do with one.”

  “I’ll cope.” She walked towards the kitchen and he followed. “Can I make you coffee? Get you a cold drink?”

  “Jac.”

  He’d sat at the counter. He was suntanned and tousled and slightly overweight and the only person in the world who’d understand how she felt. If she could trust him. “Why are you here?”

  “Tom told me.”

  “I didn’t know you talked to Tom.”

  “Yeah, I talk to Tom. He’s hard to avoid. I only have a voodoo doll of Dad, into which I hammer great whopping rusty nails—regularly.”

  “It’s not working.”

  “Clearly.”

  She leant on the counter across from him. “I’m not good company.”

  “Lucky I’m not here for your scintillating wit.”

  She could trust Bryan, but he still talked to Tom and she didn’t know how she felt about Tom. “What are you here for again?”

  “You’re thinking about suing right now, aren’t you?”

  She straightened up, pushed her shoulders back. “I’d be a fool not to be.”

  Bryan got off the stool and walked around the counter. He eyed the coffee machine Jay bought her. You more or less needed a pilot’s licence to drive it. “You’d be a fool if you did. I investigated it, and I had a more clear-cut case; unfair dismissal, but there was no guarantee I’d win and even if I did, the additional reputation damage that’d come with it would’ve be crippling. Does this thing do your taxes too?”

  “And my weekly pedicure.”

  Bryan grinned. “I’d settle for a flat white. You’re also thinking about copping it sweet and settling for what is still a pretty damn good job.” He turned back to look out at the rest of the apartment. “With outstanding perks.”

  She nodded. It was the most practical option and the one that made her want to scream until she lost her voice.

  “It’s a rare problem you have.”

  “Rare? There are two of us in this room who’ve had the same problem.”

  “Half the world still fights for food and shelter. They drown baby girls in some countries.”

  “God, Bryan. I’m supposed to feel okay about being passed over because it’s a First World problem.”

  His hand shot out and closed over her arm. “No. You’re supposed to have some perspective.”

  She pulled away and turned the coffee machine on. It’d cost eight thousand dollars. It was hard to remember that people still died for lack of fresh water.

  Bryan guessed the right cupboard and got two cups and saucers out. “Then there’s the whole take this job and shove it notion.”

  She needed to trust somebody, preferably someone she didn’t have to pay for that privilege, like an employment lawyer or a headhunter. “I’m sensing you’ve had some experience with this kind of thing.” She put the cups under the coffee machine’s spouts, and retrieved the milk.

  “Funny. You were always funny when you weren’t scared, Jac.”

  Bryan had seen her scared. He’d seen her fight it to stand up to Malcolm. As a kid she’s been all spit and gurgle. Now she was like the coffee machine, quietly efficient but boiling inside.

  She put the flat white, cafe style, in front of him. “I haven’t been truly scared for a long time.” Which was true if you didn’t include the bomb blast, which was a natural reaction, and you ignored Brent, who was a mistake no amount of red paint on a canvas helped her forget, and Mace, who was something else altogether. “I’m not scared now.”

  “Well, you should be.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “This is one of those crossroads, Jac. Not one of your choosing, but a fork in the proverbial road if ever there was one. Time to ask yourself what you really want, when what you wanted can’t be anymore.”

  She sipped her coffee and studied him. The extra weight looked good on him, so did his complete ease with himself. “When did you get so Zen?”

  “When I decided it was okay not to be like Dad.”

  She’d never realised it before the discussion with Tom, but it was clear now. She and Bryan had both tried to be like Malcolm on his best days and neither of them had been able to kill off enough of their real selves to get the job done properly. They were lousy actors. Tom, on the other hand, for all his flaws, was his own person and no threat to Malcolm because of it.

  “You too, huh.”

  “Until the moment he sacked me I wanted to be him.” Bryan sipped and sighed. “Stupid. Best thing that ever happened to me, after Kath said yes and we had Brianna.” He looked at her under raised brows, like a proper older brother, one who genuinely cared might. “So what do you really want to be when you grow up, Jacinta Wentworth? Answer that question and you’ll know what to do now.”

  She’d felt mostly anger all day. A heated fury that made her joints ache until the call with Henry left her blistering, wanting to scrape her own skin off to cool down. Now she felt oddly detached, like she’d caught sight of someone in the glass of a shopfront and was shocked to realise that random person in the reflection was her.

  If she wasn’t Jacinta Wentworth, corporate heiress, who was she?

  “I’ve got a hint for you. You don’t want to be him, not ever.”

  Bryan knew the score. It was time to find a new dream, not one that accepted second best.

  “And before you get sick of Bryan’s advice for good living,” he made finger quote marks above his head, “Don’t rush into a new job. Smell the flowers.”

  “Bryan’s advice is full of clichés.” And home truths that stung like needle pricks in a hundred uncomfortable places.

  He grinned. “They cost less on the family discount plan. I’ll be sending you my bill.”

  They moved to the lounge and talked more; Kath and Brianna. Tom. Bryan’s new business and how happy he was to be his own boss, make his own mistakes and make good money too. It was a long way from the C-suite role he’d had, but he spoke about it with such enthusiasm and light in his dark eyes that it was impossible not to see his happiness.

  Jacinta Wentworth, corporate heiress, usually looked like she spent a lot on clothing, had somewhere else important to be and could do with a good laugh. Jacinta Wentworth, thwarted businesswoman, had a headache, stiff neck, tense ears and toes, the beginning of a permanent frown wrinkle between her brows.

  When Bryan left she felt calmer, not so keen to tear things into little pieces or scream at the walls. Not yet resolved on her next move, but there was less steam clouding her thinking, less molten lava gurgling in her veins.

  She heated a casserole for dinner and watched the late news: sextuplets born in the back of a car, a new, thinner, faster, better gadget, a movie starlet’s surgery scandal, sport, lots of sport, and a whale that swam down a river and made friends with a cow.

  Yes, it was hard to keep your perspective when there were few reminders that the world wasn’t a fair and equitable place, but Bryan had managed it and so could she.

  She reached for the remote to turn the set off and a breaking news item aired. Roger Kincaid was found hanged in his prison cell. He’d made a noose of his own uniform.

  She stared at the screen, knowing her career was as good as strangling her and whatev
er decision she made, she needed to avoid the same fate.

  19: Flamethrower

  Dillon did a double-take like in a bad comedy with a laugh track when he saw Mace waiting outside his office building. “Oh fuck, they sacked you.”

  “I got in first.”

  “You quit?”

  He nodded and held out a takeaway coffee.

  Dillon face-palmed, sitcom style. “Oh man.” He took the coffee but eyed it suspiciously. It’s not like Mace had ever shown up at his work with beverages before.

  “I’m scared to ask.” He took an exploratory sip through the slot in the plastic lid and nodded his approval then said, “Shit, man you quit.”

  Yeah, it was up there with dramatic gestures, but it was done now. It’d take a long time to forget the look on Nolan’s face when he stood on a desk and made his goodbye speech. Standing with Dillon on the street while the peak hour rush built around them, it was hard to believe he’d done that. He’d even bowed like a busker who believed he was on the verge of the big time when the rest of the team started hooting, cheering and throwing things. It was a moment of insanity with the kind of popularity he’d never experienced. For a full ten minutes he was everyone’s hero.

  He’d arrived back at work after Buster’s funeral with every intention of keeping his head down, staying out of Nolan’s way and hoping the less said about his absence the better. He had a leave pass from Dr Dark in his back pocket and a death certificate if anyone pushed him, but his preference was to slip quietly into the stream and get on with things.

  “Screw coffee,” Dillon chucked the empty in a bin. ”You quit. I need a drink.”

  They decided on food as well. A laneway bar, modern Chinese and imported beers. Mace looked at the prices on the menu, realised he no longer had an income and laughed. “I might’ve just fucked myself.”

  But if he could sell Buster’s house, his house now, he’d have money to live on; they’d have money to work with, and time to approach other investors. The experience with Summers-Denby had taught them about the requirements and rigour venture capitalists used to assess the projects they invested in. They could apply that learning and get serious about finding funding.