Eventually Bevan and Vicki kissed and everyone clapped between sniffles. I could see Dad from the corner of my eye. He was crying a bit too, or watering up at least. I’d never seen him do that before. Mum used to tell me how he’d only cried the once and that was when his dad died. His dad had dropped dead helping Mum and Dad move into their new flat just outside Belfast not long after they were married. He was carrying a couch with Dad, and just keeled over. Gone like that. Mum came out of the lift and tripped over his body.
Dad had cried, she said, but his brother had howled like a baby because he’d had a fight with his father a few weeks before and he’d refused to speak to him since. He’d sobbed and carried on in a vain attempt to make up for it. They’d brought the coffin to Dad’s mum’s house and when they’d opened the coffin it wasn’t him. Not that it didn’t look like him, like the way some people say about a dead person not looking like they used to. It really wasn’t him. It was some lady who’d been in a bad car crash and was pretty cut up. Whenever Dad had told the story when we were kids he’d said he told the undertaker that his dad had hit the floor pretty hard, but not that hard. So there was a funny side to it.
“There’s champagne everyone,” said Vicki, producing two bottles of cheap stuff. I wondered if this is how her parents envisaged their daughter’s wedding. They stood there with fixed grins. No string quartet, no marquee in the garden, and no Scotch College old boy to work at Daddy’s business.
“Any glasses, or do we use a kidney bowl?” asked Chris. Vicki’s mum gave a look like she’d stepped in a dog turd.
“Thought you’d have a hip flask with you mate,” said Bevan. He was smiling, looking happier than I’d ever seen him. One of the nurses went out and came back with a tray of proper looking champagne flutes, which turned out to be plastic. There was a medicine cup in the middle of it.
“That’s for you,” she said to Bevan, filling it up and overflowing it. Yet another nurse in her mid-twenties with a Northern Irish accent. I could see Mum’s ears prick up. She’d be off on her usual routine soon, asking stuff like where do you come from, and do you know the Banks family who live down near Lough Neagh. Trying to conjure familiarity where there was none. I could see the nurse nodding and uh-huhing, but looking over at the rest of us.
Charis put an arm around me. I put my chin on her head. Fresh hair smell.
“Happy?” I asked, more in hope. Surely things had sorted themselves out.
“Glad I made it,” she said, hedging her bets.
Mum and Vicki’s parents made a bee-line to Vicki and Bevan and did the kissing thing. Even though Bevan’s immune system was at an all-time low, it didn’t really matter now. It was transplant or bust. Dad still hung back.
“Hi Mr McEvoy,” said Charis, dragging me over to him. She gave him a hug.
“Hi Charis,” said Dad awkwardly, and looking guilty.
“Nice wedding,” I said.
“Great, great, glad I got to it.”
“Stuart didn’t make it?”
“No, but there’s a telegram, Chris’s got it.”
“Gather round, everyone,” announced Vicki. We all stopped and turned to her. She sat on the edge of the chair Bevan was in, holding his hand. “We’ve got another announcement to make.”
“You’re pregnant!” called out Chris. Vicki’s mum shot him a glare. Her dad made a hurrumph sound in embarrassment.
“Chris,” seethed Mum.
“We’ve found a suitable donor.” It was like she’d said that they were pregnant because there were all these gasps and cries, and a few more hugs. “It’s not as compatible as a sibling,” she said when it had settled down. She looked at me with what seemed like a glare. I almost said sorry. “But it’s the next closest. It’s from someone on the donor register in Melbourne.”
Dad couldn’t help looking at Charis with what seemed like sheer relief on his face. Off the hook again.
“So what happens next?” I asked.
“We wait until they get the bone marrow out of him − it’s a ‘him” − and then fly it over here. Bevan should be hooked up to it sometime in the next few days. It’s just like a blood transfusion for him.”
“Then what?”
“Wait and see,” said Bevan, “Wait and see. If it works it’ll take a few weeks to build up a good blood count in my system.” He didn’t say what would happen if it didn’t work. He lifted a hand to scratch his face and winced in pain at his unresponsive fingers. He suddenly looked small and helpless sitting there. I felt a pang. My poor brother. My poor, poor brother. I was hoping Dad felt the same, or even more. It was his son. Still, he had Lauren and Jesse. I often liked to think that he thought more of the four of us. We were the original legitimate off-spring after all. This had been reinforced by Mum down the years. Could Dad feel the same way about the others as he did about us? Who were they? Just the others. Imagine if they’d turned out if they’d been more compatible with Bevan than the three of us.
Bevan brought proceedings to an end by throwing up his champagne over the floor. It lay there in a fizzy pink froth.
“Shit,” he mumbled, as a foamy bubble dribbled down his face onto his suit collar.
“Aww babe,” sighed Vicki, looking at her parents. The fixed grimace was still there. They’d never been in to see Bevan, so it was uncharted territory. Besides, they didn’t look the type who’d been to weddings where the groom throws up during the reception
“Show’s over folks,” said the Northern Irish nurse, “Bevan’s had a pretty full day.” Even as she spoke she was getting his suit off him. He had his gown on underneath. The celebrant whispered her good-byes and tip-toed out exaggeratingly. She had another gig to go to. Probably some twice-divorced fifty-somethings in a park, complete with adult kids and a crate of white doves.
“Guess you’ll be honeymooning here then,” said Chris. He went over and pretended to buff Bevan’s shiny head with his shirt sleeve. “See ya mate. Congrats Vicki.” He gave her a kiss and went to leave. Chris hadn’t looked at or spoken to Dad once. He’d held his head away from him the whole time as if he’d had a stiff neck and couldn’t turn it.
“Chris,” said Charis, as he walked out. Chris acted as if he hadn’t heard her.
“No don’t,” said Dad grabbing her arm, “It’s up to him.” Having experienced Charis’s leadership style the hard way recently, he wasn’t up for it again any time soon.
Mum was speaking to Vicki’s parents and they were making a good fist of listening. I tuned in. “Now that we’re family,” Mum was saying, “Maybe you’ll come over and have tea with me?”
“Yes, yes, very good, eh Yvonne?” said Vicki’s dad with as much sincerity as he could muster. “We’ll get your number off Vicki, Pam. Give you a call.”
“Very good, very good,” said Yvonne’s mouth, while Yvonne’s face said “Get me out of here now.”
“Sure I’ll write it down for you now,” said Mum fumbling for a pen in the fake leather bag she’d got the time she went to Singapore. “No pen. Bevan have you a pen in your drawer love?” She found one and wrote on the back of an envelope. Vicki’s dad took it like it was loaded and might go off any second. I felt like going over to Mum and dragging her away for her own sake. A bolt of anger surged through me as I watched Mum humiliate herself obliviously. Vicki didn’t get to be the way she was without some genetic help.
I turned back to Dad and Charis.
“Good they’ve got a donor,” she said.
“Yes, great, best thing. He’s got a chance now.” They fell into silence. Charis looked at me expectantly.
“Want to go downstairs for a coffee?” I asked.
“Well, aye, that’d be nice,” said Dad, ”If it’s not putting you out.” Mum came over and joined us as he said it.
“Want to have coffee with us Mrs McEvoy?”
Charis’ request took Dad by surprise and he went to say something. Mum got in first.
“Great! Downstairs?” Mum didn’t bat an eyelid.
“Yeah, why not? Might as well have our own reception, hey Rob?” said Charis. She turned to me and raised her eyebrows as if daring me.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic, “Good idea.” All I wanted to do was get Charis out of there, hold her, feel her against me, and talk to her to get things right. Now I’d have to go down in the lift with my parents. Beside I was sure Mum only said yes out of curiosity. There was still stuff she wanted to know about Dad.
We stood in silence. The lift’s counterweight groaned under the added strain.
“Coffee or tea?” asked Dad over the noise. He got up from his hard-won chair. The cafe had been full when we arrived. Thin scrawny men with bad hair from bad suburbs sat over cokes and sausage rolls, their fat partners with black cracked heels and thongs scoffing cake. One or two better dressed young couples with kids. Visiting grandma perhaps.
“No tables,” I said, half relieved, “Maybe we should give it a miss.”
“There’s one,” said Charis, pouncing as an older grim-faced couple holding plastic bags full of clothes got up. Charis hovered a little too close, like the kid bagging the full-forward position at school footy before everyone else gets to the oval.
“Can we at least clear our things?” said the man. He sounded really pissed off.
“I’ll do it for you,” Charis announced cheerfully, taking the tray from him and walking over to put it on the metal rack.
“Cheek,” muttered the woman walking off. She raised an eyebrow at Dad as a parting shot. Dad gave his well-cultivated ‘don’t blame me’ look.
Mum was the only one who wanted tea.
“Weak, not too strong, lots of milk.”
“I remember that,” said Dad.
“Actually just get them to give me hot water and a bag.”
Dad walked off, probably remembering that too. I watched him grab a tray and line up wearing the blank faces of self-serves and dole queues.
“How’s it feel seeing Mr McEvoy, Mrs McEvoy?” asked Charis.
“He looks old,” whispered Mum, leaning in and using her conspirator’s voice, “Gone really grey.”
“He can’t hear you Mum.”
“I know,” she whispered.
Dad looked over, then away again as he caught us watching him.
“How about we use the Cone of Silence Mum? That way we can say what we like and he won’t hear us.”
“The Cone of what?”
“Or maybe our shoe phones.”
Charis gave me a look that I didn’t like, as if I was spoiling something. Her plans maybe.
“He’s been really concerned about Bevan you know,” she said.
“If he’d been a bit more concerned twelve years ago it might have meant something.”
“Mum, do we have to go there?”
“Charis and I are talking. We’re free to talk about what we want, isn’t that right Charis? Just because you get defensive when we talk about it...”
“I don’t get defensive,” I interrupted, trying to sound as defenceless as possible, but failing. Mum always got me on that one. She only had to say the words “don’t”, “be”, and “defensive” and anything I said to try and explain how I wasn’t being defensive only sounded more and more defensive. It was like trying to untangle myself from barbed wire. Across the no-man’s land of tables, chairs, and bodies I could see Dad paying at the till. He put some serviettes on the tray. He was coming over. He’d bought cake too.
“Change the subject,” I said, trying to look and sound casual.
Dad did the waiter thing. “A latte for Charis, flat whites for me and Rob. Tea for Pam.”
“Cheese cake too,” said Mum, “How nice.”
“Your favourite?” laughed Charis.
“My favourite.”
Dad smiled. It was feeling really weird: My brother just married and dying upstairs; my divorced parents having coffee together downstairs; my Dad’s wife and other children at home. The juggling elephant on a unicycle was due about now.
The juggling elephant was Charis.
“How’s Lauren and Jesse?” she asked, before casually licking the froth off her spoon as if it had been an oversight. Left field, out of the blue, from nowhere, Hail Mary-on-the-buzzer, final kick of the game. There it was: her plan. Agent-not-so-Smart hadn’t seen it coming. A KAOS infiltrator in the ranks of Control. An open question ostensibly aimed at no-one.
“Who?” asked Mum, distracted by the clang of a falling tray.
I stiffened and, despite myself, looked at Mum. Suddenly she was all attention. Dad went red, really red. Red all the way up from his neck to the skin outcrops on his scalp where his hair was thinning.
“Good,” said Dad finally in a small-kid voice, owning the question. It’s the standard school boy response. “How was school?” “Good.” “How was soccer?” “Good.” “How was the birthday party?” “Good.”
He hacked a cough. The room, the tables, the chairs, the fat women, even the hospital, they all disappeared; sucked into the vortex of the coffee cup into which I was now staring.
“Lauren and Jesse?” Mum asked.
“My daughter and son.” How he managed to say it I don’t know.
“We’ve met them haven’t we Rob?” said Charis.
“You’ve got other children,” Mum said more than asked, putting her cake fork down. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Why wouldn’t you want more? Just like me, the first lot weren’t good enough.”
“Don’t be silly Mum.” I wasn’t going to bite at Mum’s cheap shot to drag us all in. She ignored me
“And a daughter too? Finally you got your little girl.” You could tell by Mum’s face that that was the one that really hurt. “You’re good at keeping secrets I must say Rob.”
“It wasn’t a secret Mum.”
“Pam...” started Dad.
“Don’t ‘Pam’ me Phil. Don’t ‘Pam’ me. You’ve got no right.”
“Mum, keep it down.”
“Don’t tell me to keep it down.” Mum wasn’t in the mood to be told what not to do. “Let’s talk about it outside,” I said, switching to the positive equation.
Charis had the look on her face Pandora must have had right after she opened the box.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” said Charis, vainly trying to gather it back up and stuff it all back in.
“Actually It’s not okay love,” said Mum wearily and quietly, “it’s not okay. It’s not been okay for a long time.”
“Pam.” Don’t whine Dad, keep your dignity, or at least find it!
“Stop!” Mum hissed, dripping with twelve years of stored-up venom, “Just stop. Charis love,” she said turning to her, as the tears started to come, “You’re the only one brave enough to be honest with me.” Charis put her arm around her.
“Bloody men eh?” I said bitterly. Dad’s weak smile gazed over the parapet before ducking back down again.
“Yes,” echoed Mum, “Bloody men. Bloody, bloody, bloody, bloody men.” I’d never heard her swear in my whole life. Now she was swearing with all of the self-conscious liberation of a Catholic school-girl in a Cultural Studies 101 tutorial. Her laughing was bubbling up in the midst of her tears.
“Dad, let’s go for a walk.”
“Leaving again Phil?”
“Mum,” I snapped, too loudly. I jumped up, scraping the chair across the lino. Suddenly the room was full again. Heads turned, but turned away again just as quickly. I could see their thoughts through the back of their skulls: Those typical public hospital types, all crass and loud. Probably on Social Security. That’s what they were thinking. That’s what I’d be thinking.
Propelled by an earnest force, Dad and I found ourselves walking through the main entrance; past puffing orderlies and young Aboriginal mums with crying kids. It had stopped raining. The sun was casing the joint for the all clear, steaming the roads and making everything and everyone sticky. My shirt clung to my back. Traffic swished and the breeze swept raindrops off th
e trees and down onto our heads. The coffee gurgled in my stomach.
“That could have gone better.”
“You reckon Dad?”
“Your mother...” he started.
“I know...my mother.”
“She’s been loyal to you.”
“We’ve been loyal to her too Dad. Very loyal. Very very loyal.” Dad stopped and put his hand on my shoulder. His eyes watered up.
“I’ve done a lot of damage to the four of you – the five of you – I know that.” He paused and looked down. “For what it’s worth I just want to give Lauren and Jesse the chance that I didn’t give you, like you know, no damage. No child deserves damage.”
“I know Dad.”
“When I left your Mum she made it clear I’d left the whole package.”
“What did you expect her to think Dad?”
“I wasn’t expecting her to think anything. I wasn’t thinking anything. I just had to get away.”
“And Gracie?”
“If it hadn’t been Gracie it would have been someone else.” Dad said it with such intensity and conviction that I had no choice but to believe him. He’d never said anything that way before.
A bell rang. We were standing outside the all-girls’ private school near the hospital. Uniformed teenagers started streaming out the doors. Three o’clock. Home time. Four wheel drives and late model everythings were mustering. Screeching laughter and slamming doors. Green and red skipped past, ignoring us, deep in must-have conversation. Dad’s hand left my shoulder and we walked on, taking a right at the corner, away from the hospital. This wasn’t over. The noise from the school subsided, blocked out by the corner building.
“I don’t know what’s got into Charis, Dad.”
“She really upset Gracie that time.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.
“Sorry son. Don’t know why Gracie got it into her head to take it out on you - hurt I suppose.”
“What are you going to do now Mum knows about Lauren and Jesse? Do you think Charis will tell her about what she did?”
“What can I do? We’ll just have to play it by ear. Bevan’s got a donor now anyway.”
Warm Honey Page 14
