“In that order?”
“In that order. C’mon, we’ll be late.”
The change in Charis stayed for dinner. Normally she’d take this lot in her stride, but she seemed subdued, and her brevity in conversation had a sharpness I hadn’t heard before. I’d caught Benny’s raised eyebrow once or twice already. Benny’s eyebrow was his emotional barometer, the higher it went the more the likelihood of rough weather.
“What do you do Charis?” asked Valerie or Mallory, a tanned, skinny part-time model/promotions assistant who by the end of the evening had picked at her fish, skipped the poached pears and cream altogether, and gone out for three cigarettes. Carl, the investment company guy with neck hanging over his shirt, hadn’t stopped looking at her clinical breasts all night, despite his girlfriend, Ashwyn kicking him every so often.
“I work in a bookshop.”
“What kind of books?” asked Valerie or Mallory.
“One’s with heaps of words,” Charis dead-panned, “No pictures though.”
“That’s interesting, why are there no pictures?”
Carl snorted, while Justin and Paula, who’d met at a financial planners’ conference in Melbourne despite having partners at the time, turned their laughing into coughs. Benny’s eyebrow indicated a storm approaching. Jude looked furious.
“Yeah Charis,” asked Benny, “Why no pictures?”
Keep this up and the Force Ten gale was due to cross the coast any time soon. It was batten down the hatches or change the conversation.
“So have you got your place on the market yet Justin?” Jude was taking it into her own hands. Good old Jude, bringing up the damp squib of the housing market. Justin and Paula looked at each other.
“Not quite,” said Justin, “Ex is playing hard-ball.”
“She’s not happy with the settlement.”
“She’s not happy with anything.”
The screech of knives. The odd over-extended “mmm”.
“Why’s she not happy with anything?” Charis. Red swarmed up my neck.
“Hmm?” It was such an innocent, sweet “hmmm?”, as if Justin hadn’t really understood the question for a second.
“Charis.” I sounded like I was pleading, which of course I was.
“Just wondered why your ex is not happy with anything?”
“For fuck’s sake Charis,” Jude, began.
“No that’s fair enough,” said Justin with a slice of venom in his grin, “We’ve got nothing to hide, do we Paula?”
Paula was looking at Charis with daggers. Justin was looking at me. Well I think he was looking at me: I was looking at the potatoes.
“Well not anymore!” laughed Charis.
Paula looked like she was going to lean in and slap her. Carl and Ashwyn were making themselves as small as possible. So was Mallory/Valerie, only her breasts obstinately refusing to shrink with the rest of her as she “oh my Gawded” under her breath.
Dinner parties are supposed to be like social tennis matches. All hit and giggle. But here was Charis doing her best John McEnroe impression. She was stalking the base-line like a seasoned pro. Looking for openings and then whipping cross-court winners. Pumping her fists. I was waiting for a “You cannot be serious!”
Silence.
And a bit more silence.
“Pity it’s not the footy season.” Benny mercifully lobbed a smokescreen, allowing us to scatter in all the confusion, “We could talk about the footy.”
“Yes, let’s not get onto the footy,” someone laughed.
“Yes let’s not,” I laughed, dying for us to get onto the footy.
“Carl’s a footy tragic, aren’t you Carl?”
“Yeah, can’t cope with the off-season – go into withdrawals.”
“Me too – won the office tipping comp last season – against all the men.”
And they were off. The engine spluttered into life again, pulling Benny and Jude’s dinner party out of its free-fall. It was the Eagles this and the Dockers that. Judd’s troublesome groin last season costing them the Premiership. Farmer’s criminal record. The same conversation would be going on all over Perth right now. This was too easy, a real get-out-of-jail-free card. Benny and Jude didn’t need to go to all this expense. They could have settled for a carton of Swan Gold and some pies in the oven. Charis had come dressed for tennis, only to be met with a wall of tight footy shorts and finger tape. Game, set and match Benny.
“Coffee anyone?” Jude asked eventually. It was safe for her to leave the dining room again.
“Please!’
“Yeah, love one.
“Normal, decaf, or hazelnut?”
“Got any green tea?” Charis. She didn’t drink green tea, or at least I’d never seen her drinking it.
“No.” Short, sharp and final from Jude. You could see what she was thinking: Give this girl an inch!
Charis sat back, chastened and sullen the rest of the night. No-one raised a single question about religion, death, sex or politics. Even if it looked like it might veer in that direction Jude re-aligned it, shutting down any hint of conversation worthy of the food she and Benny had prepared. Nothing about words. Not even about pictures. We were the first to leave.
“Have to drop Charis home – she’s on open-up in the morning.”
“Where’s that?”
“Bookshop darling. Remember she works in a bookshop.”
“Yeah, how could I forget. Ha ha ha!” We left the room, Charis barely saying goodbye. Paula flashed the smile of the vindictive winner.
Charis stared out the window on the drive back to her place.
“Thank God for footy!”
Her pale ghost smiled back to me in the glass.
“I might have been a bit rude tonight, sorry.”
“Benny’ll cope.”
“Jude might not be so understanding.”
“She’ll get over it. Besides it means there won’t be a next time.” It sounded funny, me soothing Charis when it was so often the other way around. I was borrowing words and lending out others.
“You mean no more Mallory?”
“I thought it was Valerie!”
“Valerie was her left one,” she laughed leaning over to me, “Mallory the right one!”
She seemed almost herself again, the humour coming back minus the spite. The car jolted into her drive finding the pothole near the gate no-one had thought of filling in.
“Don’t switch it off,” she said, leaning over to kiss me full on the lips, “I’m exhausted, and I’m on open-up tomorrow morning, remember.”
CHAPTER NINE
Dad found out by accident - literally.
“Robert!” I knew his voice and how he rolled the second “r” in my name.
Bevan was onto his second round. I had parked near Casualty and was walking past sports injuries and screaming ear-infected toddlers writhing on knees. Suddenly there they all were: Dad, Gracie, Jesse and Lauren. I had to look again; it was so out of context. Jesse had a bandage round his ankle, and was on crutches. He was in soccer shorts and a blue number seven top with “Carswell Quality Meats” printed on it.
“Dad! Gracie! Guys!” Lauren hung on her mum’s leg, while Jesse made pain sounds for the camera.
“Filthy tackle,” said Dad, “Two-and-a-half hours sitting here waiting to see a doctor.”
“Hope the other guy got sent off.”
“He’s in ICU, isn’t he son?” laughed Dad.
“We go to all his games,” said Gracie, “But it looks like we’ll have a few weekends at home with this one.” Dad had never gone to our games. “How’s Charis?” she continued, “Did she get those spices I told her about yet?”
“Not yet, but we’re going to go to that store soon. She still raves about that meal.”
“We’ll have another one,” said Dad, “Sorry I haven’t returned your call. What are you doing here? Visiting someone?” As he said it Gracie made an ahem sound and Dad’s face went red and he mumbled something.
<
br /> “Bevan actually.” I didn’t really know where to go with it. Dad’s second son was lying in a nearby hospital ward and he would never have known if I hadn’t walked past. And if some ten year old soccer player hadn’t lunged at Jesse’s ankle. And if we hadn’t recognised each other from dinner at their place a few weeks back. Had this sort of thing nearly happened before? Maybe Dad had come within metres of one of us – a ship sailing oblivious and serene past an iceberg? Why the collision now? Perhaps it had something to do with my decision to disinter him. The site had been disturbed and a chain of events, that would have remained dormant without my intervention, was springing up like weeds in the freshly-turned soil. And where was Mum? For all Dad knew she was with Bevan right now, just a couple of concrete walls away. Mum’d been in nearly every day this time, much to Vicki’s annoyance, so there was a good chance
“Look, we’d better keep moving,” said Gracie, “Get this boy’s prescription and get him off his leg.” Dad’s face was confused and I could tell he wanted more, but Gracie was going already, one arm around Jesse. I think she was thinking the same thing I was.
“I’ll call you,” Dad said over his shoulder, “This week sometime.” He said it with an expansive air, as if he’d just pick the phone up on a whim any old day, rather than what he would do: sweat it out until Thursday afternoon, hurrying Gracie out the door to the shops, cursing under his breath as she delayed and flittered about looking for price-saving dockets and her purse. Probably much the same as he’d done to Mum when he started seeing Gracie on the sly. Is it possible, I wondered as they walked out, to commit adultery with your own family?
My hands were shaking as I coated them with sterilising hand-wash from the dispenser that stood guard outside Bevan’s ward. I smeared the cold gel with all the treacherous vigour of a Lady MacBeth washing out imaginary spots, her mind unravelling with her plans.
I went in and the smell of hand-wash curdled with the sweet ’n’ sour of vomit.
“He’s been sick,” said Mum.
The curtains around the bed were closed and I could hear Bevan’s groggy voice, and someone else’s. A nurse probably.
Mum looked tired. Anger came from nowhere and surged through me. There’s Dad, complaining about a two-and-a-half hour wait for a sprained ankle, while three floors up his ex-wife is watching his favourite-before-he-left puke his guts up from chemotherapy. I felt the mean-spirited comfort of knowing that he now had a burr lodged in his mind that would irritate him at all the right times. “What’s wrong with Bevan?” he’d be thinking as they were getting McDonald’s on the way home. “Is it serious?” as they played a game or watch a video that night. Perhaps even: “Have I done the wrong thing?” as he and Gracie made love in the silent dark. If anyone should be trying to purge the damned spot it should be him, not me.
The nurse pulled the curtains back.
“That’s better, I’ll swing past soon and see how you’re getting on.”
“Mate,” said Bevan. His beside table was a blend of cute “Get Well Soon” cards and stuffed toys, offset by an FHM magazine and a card with a sexy nurse bending over the bed.
“Been sick eh?”
“Like a night on the piss.”
Mum tut-tutted, her face registering a mix of disapproval and pleasure. Bevan’s puking had given her the chance to flee to the safety of her mother-hen role.
“How’s the chemo going?”
“Lousy. They say it’s worse than the cancer.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that some doctors say if they ever get it, they’ll refuse the treatment and just go out with morphine.”
“We’re going to beat it before that,” said Mum, giving me a glare.
“Hope so,” grunted Bevan waving his hand at a chair. I sat down.
“What are those brown things on your hands?”
“Lesions. They come with the territory. Get enough of them and you start to look like a leopard.”
“Vicki not in?”
“She’s at a family thing.” Mum shot back, emphasising “family”, like it was an excuse. “Family things” were McEvoy things, no one else had the right.
“Her Dad’s birthday,” Bevan explained, “Sixtieth.”
“Fair enough. Anyone else been?”
“Chris literally left as you came in.”
“Must have missed him.”
Chris. I hadn’t seen him for weeks, and I’d probably walked past him the foyer. So had Dad, though he wouldn’t have recognised him anyway as Chris was four when he left. Chris might have recognised him though: Mum still kept her wedding photo out, two fresh-faced twenty-five year olds with it all ahead of them. It suddenly felt like one of those movies where people keep criss-crossing each other in corridors; a series of comic timings designed to build tension and frustration.
“Chris-crossing.”
“What’s that dear?”
“Chris-crossing, like crossing Chris on the way in and not seeing him.”
“Funny man!” said Bevan sarcastically, like he did whenever I came up with a pun around the table. He puked without warning all over the sheets and down his tee-shirt.
“Shit,” he groaned, as Mum jumped up, grabbing tissues and smearing it in further.
“I’ll call the nurse,” I said, pushing the button.
“A family thing.” hissed mum, stuffing soggy tissues into the kidney bowl, while Bevan did the post-puke trembles. I poured him a glass of water.
“Thanks mate.”
I put my hand on his bald head, cold and clammy from vomiting, and without warning felt the hiccoughy lump that you get in your throat just before crying.
“Don’t, you’ll start her off,” said Bevan trying to laugh. It was too late.
“Phil McEvoy,” she said through gritted teeth, a tear rolling down her cheek, “I hope you’re happy wherever you are.”
CHAPTER TEN
Dad had left us with a dollar in the bank and each other. Mum used to tell people that. She told them the dollar in the bank bit anyway because she thought that to be left with each other was a good thing. A dollar wouldn’t last very long, but each other? That could last for years.
The day he left was the hottest January day ever recorded. Stuart and I had sat behind our closed bedroom doors all afternoon, boiling to death, but determined not to come out. To do so would be to watch Dad pack. He’d started that morning. He taken down the burgundy vinyl suitcase we used for holidays, laying out his clothes like a methodical zombie, and listening to Charlie Pride records. To come out would be to listen to Mum desperately reason with him, alternating between cajoling and castigation. To come out would be see Bevan and Chris, sweaty, tear-stained and whinging, unsure of why Mum was so desperate and Dad so silent. And to come out would be to face each other. Stuart and I talked cricket, English football, girls, and the latest Madness album. We didn’t do divorcing parents.
“Shutters and boards cover the windows of the house where we used to live.” mourned Charlie Pride from the lounge room.
“Robert, Stuart, get in here!” Mum said with a cracked and urgent voice. Somehow we both did, avoiding each other’s eyes in the process. Dad was putting the last of his clothes in the case. He zipped it and stood it up on the floor. I felt the same knot in my gut I’ve since felt at funerals when the minister pushes the button and the coffin whirs out of sight. The family starts to sob because they know it’s really all over this time.
“Don’t go Phil,” pleaded Mum, as if she’d only thought of it.
“Is Daddy going on holidays?” asked Chris.
“He thinks he is,” Mum said bitterly, “but holidays always end.”
“He’ll come back then?”
“Shut-up Chris,” snapped Stuart, making him cry.
“Good one Stu,” I said, as Chris held up his arms to Mum to pick him up. Dad was staring at the suitcase like a weightlifter sizing up a clean and jerk.
“Think of the boys,” said Mum changing tack.
“I’ll
still see the boys.”
“But will they still see you?”
“Let’s not do this in front of them, okay Pam?”
“What? You mean let’s not pack and leave in front of them, or let’s not talk about whether you’ll still see them in front of them?” Where are you going Stuart? Don’t you want to watch your father leave us?”
“Not particularly!” Stuart’s door slammed, followed by the blaring radio. “AND IT’S A SWELTER IN PERTH TODAY! GET HOME, PACK THE FAMILY AND HEAD FOR THE WATER. THAT’S WHERE I’M GOING STRAIGHT AFTER THIS SHIFT!” Charlie Pride struggled to compete, but gave up.
“Phil, I’m asking you one more time...”
“THE BUREAU SAYS MORE OF THE SAME TOMORROW WITH A TOP OF 41!
Dad picked up the case and walked out the bedroom, the rest of us following like simpering attendants.
AND HERE’S SOMETHING YOU’LL SEE AT THE BEACH, A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS WITH ‘I RAN’!”
Things began to blur, move in slo-mo. Mum gesturing, Dad blank-faced, and the two younger boys bouncing and pulling at both of them. Then suddenly the suitcase was in the boot, Dad was in the car and going out the drive. I ran out into the road, the heat from the tarmac grabbing at my ankles as Mum, Bevan and Chris stood on the step wailing together. I watched him all the way down to the first stop sign; saw the sharp red brake lights; a final wink from the indicator turning left, and he was gone. I walked back to the house. I looked over at our neighbour across the road, who was watering his hanging baskets. He turned away as I looked.
“He’ll be back for these,” said Mum, taking the exhausted Charlie Pride off the turntable and snapping him over her knee. It was her last gesture of defiance before two years of despair.
* * *
If Dad was going to phone me liked he’d promised at the hospital it would be at four o’clock on Thursday. Gracie would have done the shopping and would be taking Lauren to ballet. I was due to pick Charis up from the book exchange at four thirty, and had half a mind to leave early and let Dad sweat on it another week, when, with all the consistency of an Indian call centre, the phone rang as the LCD oven clock hit four.
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