Less Than Perfect

by Ber Carroll

  I flick the switch on my PC, mentally preparing myself while I wait for it to start up. I’ll go in there, I resolve, and take it on the chin. I’ll agree with everything Jarrod throws at me, be contrite in the extreme, and then I’ll set about doing what I can to redeem the situation.

  Zoe pops up on the other side of the partition. ‘You didn’t miss much at the meeting.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Jarrod does not have a happy aura today.’

  Zoe is rather fascinated with auras. She’s been to aura-reading retreats and workshops and finesses her skills on unsuspecting colleagues. From what I gather, auras vary in colour and structure, and reflect one’s true nature. But rather confusingly, they can change with time, sometimes very quickly, and thus indicate mood. Given that I can usually read Jarrod’s mood directly from his face, I’m not convinced of the need to analyse his aura.

  Still, I play along. ‘And what colour is Jarrod’s aura today?’

  ‘Predominantly black. A sure sign of anger.’

  I pull a face. ‘I expect his aura will be a lot blacker after I see him.’

  Jarrod’s door is ajar and he’s frowning at his screen, typing with two fingers. I knock, take his glance as an invitation to come in, and shut the door behind me.

  ‘I’m sorry about this morning,’ I begin, joining my hands as I walk towards him. ‘I have an excuse – but you’re not going to like it.’

  He says nothing. Jarrod isn’t one to prompt, at least not with words; the expression on his face is quite sufficient.

  ‘I was in an accident on Friday night – with Derek Jones from Telelink.’

  He’s shocked, so shocked that his frown momentarily clears. ‘What?’

  ‘We were in a motorbike accident. Derek was taking me home. We came off the bike.’

  Jarrod pushes back his seat from his desk and looks me up and down. ‘Were you hurt?’

  ‘We were able to walk away. But we both have cuts. I believe that he might need a skin graft.’

  He nods slowly, ominously. ‘Friday night? You met him for dinner, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Had you been drinking?’

  ‘Not a lot.’ I sigh. ‘But, yes, we’d both been drinking.’

  Fury rushes to fill the blankness on his face. ‘Fuck it, Caitlin. What were you thinking?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘He’s a client. You knowingly put yourself and him in danger!’

  ‘All I can say in my defence is that he was close, so close to committing …I thought the ride would seal it …’

  It had been close. There could have been an order on the fax machine this morning. Jarrod could be slapping me on the back right now.

  ‘That’s the problem with you, Caitlin – you don’t know where to draw the line.’

  ‘I –’

  ‘You didn’t need to be on the bike. If he was going to crash, you didn’t need to be there!’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘You don’t know how to hold back, do you? Wine them, dine them, get them drunk – you don’t seem to know any other way to do business!’

  Despite my earlier resolve to take his chiding with good grace, my temper stirs. ‘I do what it takes, Jarrod. Sometimes it involves pushing boundaries –’

  ‘Boundaries? You don’t know the fucking meaning of boundaries! That’s why you’ll never go any further in your career, why you’ll never become a manager.’

  That’s unfair, very unfair, and I have to bite down on my lip so that I don’t retaliate.

  ‘I don’t want you to have any further contact with Telelink or Derek Jones. I will handle the client from today.’

  I gasp, the sheer injustice making tears sting my eyes. I’ve done all the ground work, all the hard work, to get to this point and now Jarrod is going to swan in at the eleventh hour and take credit for it all.

  ‘And you can consider this a verbal warning. If you ever blur the lines between business and personal again, you can go and look for a job elsewhere.’

  I bite down harder on my lip. Part of me wants to tell him exactly what he can do with his job – and with himself for that matter. But another part, the part that’s my father’s daughter, knows that I’m getting exactly what I deserve. An action can be judged by its consequences, my father would say self-righteously. My actions were unquestionably out of order and the consequence is that my job and everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve over the last four years is now in jeopardy.

  I nod to show him that I understand the warning and then I back out of the room, appropriately chastened. It’s my deepest fear, losing my job, a paranoia that goes all the way back to Liam, aimless and chronically bored as he mooched about the house; unworthy and useless, at least in our father’s eyes. I can think of nothing, nothing worse than losing my job, but nobody on this side of the world, least of all Jarrod, could begin to understand my fear, where it originates from or how deep it goes.

  For the rest of the day I keep a low profile. I don’t dare to call Derek again but still hope against hope that he will call me and that we can put things right between us; then Jarrod, faced with the evidence that Derek still wants me on the account, will have to back down. Derek doesn’t call, however, and by the end of the day the writing’s on the wall: my client doesn’t want to speak to me and my first multimillion-dollar deal has, as a result of my own stupid actions, spun out of reach. Almost worse, if the deal is somehow salvaged it will be Jarrod who gets the credit and not me.

  I visit my GP on my way home from work. When she enquires about the accident, I give her an edited version of events at which she looks up from her examination of my arm, her eyes full of reproach.

  ‘It sounds like you were incredibly lucky.’

  I know she’s right, but I don’t feel very lucky.

  ‘I’m going to put on some lighter bandaging,’ she continues. ‘You can take it off at the end of the week, but come back to see me if the wounds don’t seem to be healing or if you have any other concerns. And make sure that you take the full course of antibiotics that were prescribed.’

  The phone is ringing inside the apartment as I turn my key in the door. I hurry, kicking the door open with my leg and dropping my bag on the floor inside before dashing to the kitchen.

  ‘Hello.’ My voice sounds a little breathless from the rush.

  ‘Caitlin …’

  For a moment my heart stops beating. Time and distance fall away and it feels as though my father is here, right in front of me, not on the other end of the phone.

  ‘Caitlin, I want to –’

  I jab the ‘end’ button, cutting him off. The few words that he uttered seem to resound in the silent apartment and I resist the infusion of memories they carry. Every few months he does this, phones me. I miss the calls more often than not and only have to deal with the voice messages, his tone familiar and authoritative as he announces himself and asks me to call him back, which I never do. He sends letters too, short ones, a few paragraphs scribed in his exacting handwriting. Contained to paper and thus indirect, the letters are easier to face, and I skim them before throwing them in the bin.

  In my bedroom I change into a loose summer dress, the jersey fabric soft against the fresh bandaging. As I pull my hair back from my face, I notice that my hands are shaking. He always has this unnerving effect on me. His timing, as usual, is spot on. How very apt that he should choose today of all days to call. It’s as though he can sense the very moment I put a step wrong.

  During my first few months in Australia I still maintained some contact with my father. I remember stilted phone conversations, animosity on my end and preoccupation on his, but communication nonetheless. But as my parents’ marriage began to unravel, our communication became more and more strained. Over that same phone line I had listened to my mother’s despair and heartbreak and I couldn’t forgive him for causing it, couldn’t forgive him for abandoning her when she needed him the most, when she had already endure
d so much, for so ruthlessly putting the ‘cause’ before his own wife and family.

  By the time the divorce was finalised, I had severed all contact with him and since then Mum has taken it upon herself to be the mediator between the fragments of what was once a family. Every Saturday morning she keeps me abreast of what’s happening, whether or not I want to know. Now, as I loop a band around my hair and slip some thongs on my feet, snippets of old conversations with Mum replay in my head, conversations that bridge the years since I’ve spoken to my father and form some of the tapestry of our estranged relationship today.

  From one such conversation, out on the balcony of the unit in Bondi Junction, I recall Mum blurting in my ear, ‘I saw your father during the week.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We met. We discussed what to do with the house and everything else. It was quite civilised.’ She was pretending to be pragmatic but I could hear the unevenness under her efficient tone. ‘He said I can stay in the house.’

  ‘That’s the least he can do!’

  ‘He’s being quite generous. It’s his house too, you know.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Mum. Fuck his generosity!’

  ‘Don’t use that kind of language, please!’ Mum’s voice had an edge of authority, something I hadn’t heard in a long time. ‘Your father is generous. He’s put everything, his heart and soul, into the support group. He and the others in the group have talked to politicians and police on both sides of the border. They’ve driven up and down the country, had secret meetings with all kinds of shady characters, put their own safety at risk trying to get the names of the men who put that bomb in our town.’

  I couldn’t find words to formulate an answer, overcome by a variety of emotions: defensiveness, anger, resentment, mostly incredulity. How could she sing his praises like this? How could she act like she had forgiven him, absolved him of everything? She wasn’t hoping to get back with him, was she? Surely that wasn’t on her agenda.

  ‘He has the names, Caitlin,’ Mum said in a gentler voice. ‘Your father has the names and he’s given them to the police. Those murderers will be brought to justice.’

  I stayed out on the balcony for some time after that phone call, feeling disturbed, off kilter, almost as though I was leaning too far over the railing and not sitting safely on one of the deckchairs. I told myself that I should be happy my parents were on speaking terms again and that Mum was starting to move on. She was sorting out her accommodation and her finances and, in the process, her future. It was all good as long as she didn’t do anything stupid like taking Dad back. As I sat deep in thought, the wind whipped up, tossing my hair and bringing goose pimples to my arms. Rain clouds gathered in the slice of sky visible from my seat, and suddenly I didn’t feel far away from Ireland, I felt close, frighteningly close.

  Leaving that particular memory behind in the bedroom, I pad to the kitchen to make a start on dinner. I extract some vegetables and meat from the fridge and a thick wooden chopping board from under the sink. Methodically, I peel the outer skin from the carrots and chop them into slices, then cubes. Next I deseed and chop a green capsicum into similar-sized pieces, the irony of the orange and green sitting side by side on the chopping board not lost on me. As I slice an onion, another old conversation begins to play in my head, once again my mother the messenger, the go-between. This conversation occurred later on in the piece, around the end of 2001. Mum and Dad had not reconciled. Mum was adamant, though, that she regarded her ex-husband as a friend, a close friend, and she continued to tell me of his achievements and challenges, defending him fiercely whenever I dissented.

  ‘It’s been a big week here in Clonmegan, Caitlin,’ Mum had said in opening.

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘There was an important report published. Have you seen anything about it in the news over there?’

  ‘No, Mum, I haven’t.’ I didn’t admit that I rarely watched the news. Too often it brought on flashbacks of my younger self standing in my room at the Elms, practising sign language from News for the Deaf, a memory from what seemed like a lifetime ago but was so easily and readily retrieved.

  ‘The report was from the police ombudsman,’ Paula continued, her voice threaded with an emotion that I couldn’t quite identify. Was it nervousness, or a sense of excitement? ‘The ombudsman criticised how things were handled on the day of the bombing. She said that had the authorities acted with more urgency and transparency things could have turned out differently, and that there at least wouldn’t have been so many fatalities.’

  I was silent. I didn’t want to hear this kind of news. The notion that the fatalities could have been prevented was too unsettling and confronting. If I thought about it for any length of time, it could tear me apart, destroy me.

  ‘Now, it doesn’t change the fact that the terrorists who planned and executed the bombing were the ones really responsible. We all know that.’

  The terrorists. Those faceless men who lurked in the recesses of my mind. I thought of them randomly, like when I was grocery shopping or sitting in a café or on the tram. I imagined them going about their daily lives, shopping for milk and bread, stuck in gridlocked traffic, drinking mugs of tea, just like me. I imagined their routine being disrupted by their sudden arrest, their hands cuffed as they were walked away from their families and everything they held dear. It was just a dream, though. In real life only one of them had been arrested and tried, and there were already rumours of a mistrial. A conviction, if I read between the lines of what my mother had previously reported back, seemed unlikely.

  ‘This formal acknowledgment by the police ombudsman that things weren’t handled the right way has brought great comfort to the town.’ Mum hesitated for a fraction of a second. When she spoke again I was able to identify the emotion that had been present in her voice from the outset. It was pride. Exhilarated and unadulterated pride. ‘Your father made this come about, Caitlin. He and the others in the group. They have been pressing and pushing and pleading. They’ve not let up.’

  ‘Good for him.’

  ‘You should be proud of him, too.’

  ‘Well, funny how I’m not,’ I retorted like a sullen teenager.

  I hung up the phone, fresh anger and hurt snarling inside me. I couldn’t begin to fathom that my mother had forgiven my father so far as to be proud of him. He’d done nothing to deserve such a civilised relationship with his ex-wife. He didn’t deserve to be forgiven or to receive accolades for his supposed achievements. I could never be proud of him, not after what he did to our family.

  In the years since that particular phone call, my father has continued to lecture at Queen’s, drilling his students on ethics and values. In every spare moment, he pursues justice for the bomb victims and their families. The list of names that seemed so promising at the start has come to nothing but he still continues to do battle, with the police, the politicians, the media, in the vain hope that someone will eventually be brought to justice. A few years back, frustrated by the lack of progress with the criminal system, the support group began civil action of their own against the individuals on the list. Had I been talking to my father, I would have advised him that this was taking things too far, that it was time to stop his crusade, to put the past to rest and move on.

  I tip the diced meat into the wok and it lands with a hiss against the hot metal. I stir for a few minutes before adding the vegetables. Jeanie will be home soon and I’ll have the stir-fry ready as a surprise. Jeanie is the closest thing I have to family in Australia. It’s like having another sister, or at least all the positive aspects of a sister, such as dependability in a crisis, familiarity, no need for pretence, and without any of the negative aspects, like sibling rivalry, teasing, grudges that go back to when you were kids. Though I’m not confiding by nature, I have involuntarily revealed a lot of myself to Jeanie over the years. I’ve told her about the controlled environment in which I grew up, my father preaching and hammering values into us from a young age only
to throw aside many of those values – along with his wife and family – in the pursuit of ‘justice’ and his personal goals. I’ve laughed at Jeanie’s tales about her seven sisters, the fighting, one-upmanship, conniving and ever-changing allegiances, and in turn shared the odd anecdote about Liam and Maeve, including how much I miss them. I’ve even told Jeanie little things about Josh – songs he liked, aspects of his personality, the things he cared about – and once, when I was rather drunk, I admitted to feeling him with me, on a different plane but there nonetheless. Jeanie has taken my confidences on board, filed them away in her oh-so-logical mind, and never takes them out for reassessment without my instigation. Jeanie isn’t about wanting to change the world or other people. She’s practical and accepting, and if I don’t want to talk, which is usually the case, then that’s perfectly okay with her. Whenever I do want to talk, she’s there to listen.

  The phone begins to ring over the hissing sound coming from the wok. I eye it warily. It could be Jeanie announcing that she’s either delayed or on her way, but I don’t risk answering it. My father is persistent if nothing else. For the last eleven years he has doggedly pursued those terrorists to the detriment of everything else. When I’m at my most negative, I liken him to them. They too believe in a higher cause, blur the lines between right and wrong, and convince themselves that the end justifies the means.

  ‘My round.’ Jeanie slides off her stool. ‘Same again?’

  ‘Yeah, thanks.’

  As she saunters towards the bar, I glance around. Only a few patrons are sitting down like me; most are standing, clutching glasses, their conversation and laughter rising into the canopy of stars and black sky. It’s surprisingly busy for a Tuesday night: Coldplay thumping from the sound system, girls dancing provocatively, men sizing them up through slightly bloodshot eyes, bouncers prowling in black suits and white shirts, soberly scanning the outdoor scene.