The Family Across the Street

by Trope, Nicole

  ‘That was years ago, Lou.’ She sighs and rubs at her forehead where she can feel a headache coming on.

  ‘Yes, but we fought all night and then the next day we both just took the day off and sorted ourselves out a bit. Sometimes a couple needs space to sort themselves out. The children may just be playing. If you call the police, I don’t think Katherine and John will appreciate it. No one in the neighbourhood ever does when you get involved.’

  ‘But John is out, isn’t he? You heard him leave this morning, you said.’

  ‘Did I say that?’ asks Lou, looking confused.

  ‘I should call Katherine…’

  ‘You’re just interfering. People will start to think you’re crazy.’

  ‘Lou, John left early this morning, just screeched off, making enough noise to wake you, that’s what you said before. Maybe they had a big fight. Maybe he… maybe he hit her or something… I don’t know. Maybe she needs help and that’s why the children made the sign. Surely you can see that something may be wrong?’

  She pulls her mobile phone out of the front pocket of her apron, spilling a couple of tissues onto the floor, which she then has to bend down to retrieve.

  ‘Well, just call Katherine, then.’

  Gladys is quiet.

  ‘I said just call her, then,’ repeats Lou.

  ‘Yes, well, I have done,’ she admits, ‘four times already and she hasn’t answered.’ She looks down at her phone, biting her lip. What is the right thing to do?

  Lou’s eyes widen. ‘You’re going to get arrested for harassment, Gladys. Imagine you in jail! What will I do then?’ He pulls at the fabric of his shirt and shakes his head as he speaks. ‘What will I do?’ he moans again.

  She moves quickly to reassure him, resting a hand gently on his fidgeting fingers.

  ‘That’s not possible, Lou,’ she comforts him. ‘I won’t call Katherine again. I’ll just call John at work quickly and then I can put this whole thing out of my mind. It will only take a minute. I’ll just ask after the children and… Oh look, I don’t know, I’ll make something up. I’ll call him at work.’

  ‘How come you have John’s work number?’

  ‘I don’t have it, but I know he works at Barker and Partners, don’t I? Katherine gave me a whole collection of notebooks from his company because she said they were changing their logo. I’m going to call, and if he sounds even a little cagey on the phone, then I’ll march back over there and see what’s happening.’ She doesn’t look at him as she speaks, but down at her phone instead. She’s not going to give him a chance to talk her out of this.

  Lou folds his arms and waits.

  Gladys peers at her phone through her glasses, slowly typing the name of John’s company into Google. ‘Ha,’ she says triumphantly when she finds it and presses on the number on the webpage entry. Katherine was very proud when she told her that John had made partner in his firm. It’s a big company with over a hundred employees. Gladys knows because she looked it up.

  ‘Yes, hello,’ she says to the woman with a very competent voice who answers. Gladys clears her throat. ‘I’m hoping to speak to Jonathon West.’

  ‘May I ask who’s calling and what it’s in reference to?’ says the woman.

  Gladys contemplates the truth but decides that a quick lie would probably get her further. ‘I’m his next-door neighbour and I think that there is a pipe leaking in his backyard. I can’t get hold of his wife and I’m worried that it’s going to flood the house.’ Gladys crosses her fingers. The truth would have sounded very strange. The convenient lie just popped out. She did once have to phone Katherine because they had left the hose on for hours while they filled the swimming pool, and the water level just kept rising. Gladys had looked out of her bedroom window and seen that it was going to overflow. ‘Thanks goodness you called,’ Katherine told her afterwards.

  ‘Just a moment, I’ll see if he’s available.’

  Gladys looks over at Lou and he nods his head. He’s interested now as well. They both need to know that Katherine is okay. She feels sort of motherly towards the young women in the neighbourhood. Katherine’s mother is no longer here to protect her daughter, and sometimes younger women need the help of an older and perhaps wiser woman.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr West didn’t come into work this morning,’ says the woman, returning to the call.

  ‘Oh, are you sure he’s not just in a meeting? I’m happy to leave a message.’

  ‘I’m afraid not. As I said, he didn’t come in today at all.’

  ‘Well, where is he then?’

  The woman hesitates. ‘His assistant did not give me that information,’ she says.

  ‘Oh, perhaps I’ll call him directly. Can I get his mobile number?’

  ‘Didn’t you say you were his neighbour?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then don’t you have his mobile number?’

  ‘I ah… no.’

  ‘I’m afraid I cannot give out personal numbers for staff. Thank you,’ says the voice, and she efficiently hangs up.

  Gladys turns to Lou and says, ‘If he didn’t go to work today, then where is he?’

  ‘At home, maybe,’ suggests Lou.

  ‘But he left this morning, you said so. If he’d come home again, we would have heard, and why would he have come home again in the middle of the day?’

  Her husband shrugs his shoulders. ‘He did leave very quickly and he made a lot of noise and I thought… I thought…’

  ‘You thought what?’ asks Gladys, trying to hide her impatience at his trailing off in the middle of a sentence.

  ‘Heavens, Gladys, I’ve just remembered he came back. He did, he came back about ten minutes later and I thought, “What’s he doing home again?” I heard the garage door go up. I heard his car pull into the driveway. He came back, Gladys, I just forgot.’

  ‘Oh, Lou,’ she says gently, ‘why didn’t you say so?’

  ‘I forgot, love, just forgot until right now. I mean it’s not something we usually pay attention to, is it? I’m sorry.’ He is apologising again and she doesn’t like to hear it. Strangely, she prefers it when he’s gruff. It means he’s feeling more like his old self.

  She sighs. ‘It’s not your fault, it’s just… things feel so strange today.’ She frowns, crossing her arms. ‘So how long did he stay after he came back? Is he still there?’

  Lou turns to stare at her, the look on his face telling her he’s bewildered by her question.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says, ‘I must have drifted off again.’ He turns back to the television. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing, love. We’re making a mountain out of a… molehill, that’s it. It’s nothing. They’re just having a day at home.’

  ‘I really don’t think so,’ says Gladys, standing up. She goes to the window, looks out onto the quiet street where nothing moves in the heat. Even the lorikeets have found some place out of the sun to sleep away the day.

  She looks at her phone. Does one call the police because they are worried about a neighbour simply because her husband is not at work and the children haven’t gone to school?

  Lou watches her quietly. ‘Look, maybe they had a tiff and they’re sorting it out now. Maybe she decided to keep the kids home from school because of the heat. Any number of things could have happened. I say we watch one of those crime series you like, the one with the doctor, you know. What about that, old girl?’

  Gladys turns to stare at the television, where a new kind of mattress is being advertised. Lou is right. No one ever appreciates a visit from the police. But that’s what they’re there for, to maintain law and order. It’s not as if she calls them that often. She didn’t call them after the little incident yesterday. She wanted to, but she didn’t.

  A news break comes on and the story of the young woman who was attacked in Melbourne is the headline. ‘The twenty-five-year-old woman assaulted two days ago is in an induced coma in Melbourne’s Footscray Hospital. Neighbours report hearing arguing in the days prior to the ass
ault.’

  Do you hear that? she thinks. They heard them arguing and did nothing and now look at that poor girl, look what’s happened to her. People are so quick to recommend you keep your nose out of their business but what if they need help? What if they really need help? She doesn’t say any of this to Lou because there’s no point. She tunes back into what the dark-haired reporter on the television is saying.

  ‘Police are appealing to the public to help identify and locate this man, last seen leaving the apartment on the night of the assault.’

  A grainy image of a young man in a red baseball cap is shown leaving the building on the CCTV.

  ‘That could be anyone,’ says Lou.

  ‘Yes,’ agrees Gladys, although there is something about him that looks vaguely familiar. She has no idea why.

  A stern-looking policeman appears on the television, his hat shading his eyes from the sun. ‘All we are asking for is help in locating this individual. We can neither confirm nor deny his involvement in the assault of the young lady. We are hoping he will come forward himself to assist police with their enquiries.’

  ‘Good thing he’s not here in Sydney,’ says Lou.

  ‘Yes,’ agrees Gladys, ‘a very good thing. That poor girl.’

  It’s strange that the man on the television seems familiar. She shakes her head. Maybe the heat is getting to her despite the air conditioning. As the news changes to another story, the image of the man on the television lingers. Just like the problem of Katherine’s silent house and what on earth she should do about it.

  11

  I was surprised by how easy it was to get a gun. An illegal one. A legal gun requires far too much paperwork and you need to use it for hunting or you have to be a member of a gun club, or a whole lot of other things that I would never have been able to lie about. I never imagined that I would know people involved in a world where illegal guns could be procured. It came up in conversation one night at a bar. ‘If I could, I would just shoot him in the head,’ my friend Derrick said, talking about his boss after a bad day at work. ‘I would,’ he muttered, ‘I really would kill him.’

  ‘Where would you get a gun?’ I asked. I had a smile on my face but I was listening for the answer. I wanted to know. I really wanted to know.

  ‘Well,’ he began, ‘I know this guy who knows someone…’

  I don’t know what Derrick would say if he knew that I used that information to actually get a gun, nor do I know what he would say about what I’m doing now. He and I stopped talking a while ago. ‘You’ve changed,’ he told me, which was code for, ‘You bore me now.’ I didn’t care then. I preferred being home. Home sweet home. Funny how quickly that changes.

  Yesterday I knocked on a door in Kings Cross. It was in a nice building, and on my way in a man taking his dog out for a walk greeted me like I had every right to be there. I assume he has no idea what is going on in his building. I knocked on the door, paid my money and left with something that can end lives. The man who handed me the gun barely even looked at me. He could have been handing me a cup of coffee.

  But lives end every day and people just go on living. That’s what I felt when she told me we were done – that my life was over. It felt like a death.

  My life was supposed to be different to my father’s life. I was not going to follow in his footsteps and end up on a sofa with a drink in my hand. It has to be different. The idea that our relationship is over is not something I can accept. I didn’t accept it. I don’t accept it but I can’t see a way back to what I had. Not anymore.

  The gun is heavy in my hand, the metal cool against my warm skin, and it is the very essence of fear itself. I believe if I didn’t have it, she would have tried to get away already. She would have sent her two little angels out of the house without question. But the gun changes things. She doesn’t know how quickly I could use it to hurt, to wound, to kill.

  They are all watching my every move.

  I can see her thinking, plotting. She has tried reasoning with me, begging me, appealing to my humanity, but she won’t get through. It’s too late for that. I had a plan for my life and, after everything I went through, I deserved to have it work out the way I wanted it to. I was in love – whatever that is. It felt like love. She was in love too once, but now she claims she’s not and it’s not fair.

  My father was right about some things. He was right about women and control.

  But I’m not going to be controlled, and if I cannot have the life I wanted, then no one gets to have a life. I check myself for feelings about this thought but there’s nothing. I could be reading a newspaper article that has nothing to do with me or looking at a row of numbers. I have taken my grief and anger and locked them away. It’s better this way.

  ‘Can they get their iPads?’ she asks, so politely, so carefully that I acquiesce. I’m being generous and kind.

  You are generous and kind to those you love. I think she would say she has treated me kindly, that she’s been generous with me. I used to see her love for me in her eyes. I should have taken note of when that changed. I know now that when someone stops loving you, it doesn’t happen quickly. It’s a pulling away, a distancing, a creating of space between you and them, and then one day you realise that the love of your life no longer thinks you’re the love of her life.

  ‘The love of my life,’ I mutter.

  ‘What?’ she asks but I don’t repeat myself. I take myself back to an earlier time, a better time.

  I met her on a cool autumn day when the wind whistled through the city. I was walking to work, my head down, my eyes streaming from the gale, and I bumped into her, just like that.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ I said and I took a step back.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she smiled, ‘no need to cry.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not, the wind… it’s…’ I stuttered because she was so pretty and I wanted to touch her brown hair where the weak autumn sun was catching thin streaks of gold. She laughed at me then because I hadn’t seen the joke. And then I laughed with her.

  ‘Have coffee with me and I’ll feel better,’ I said, and she said yes. I couldn’t quite believe she’d agreed. The coffee shop was right there and there was a table inside, out of the wind. The air tasted of sugar and the coffee machine roared and clanked. We sat opposite each other for a few moments after ordering our drinks, just looking at each other, smiling as we became aware that the attraction was mutual.

  ‘I should get back to work,’ she said.

  ‘Where do you work?’ I asked, but she shook her head. She wasn’t ready to tell me yet and I understood. You never know what’s going on in a stranger’s head. She’s known me for a long time now, but she still has no idea – or at least she had no real idea. She knows now.

  After that first half-date, I remember walking out of the coffee shop and looking up at the sky and sending a silent prayer of thanks because it felt like this was what I had been waiting for through all the painful years of my life. Here, finally, was the reward I deserved. I was certain she would be different to every other woman I had ever known. Absolutely certain and, of course, completely wrong.

  And so here I am and the gun seems to be getting heavier as the hours pass. I am becoming a little unsure about my plan but I can’t do anything about that now.

  ‘Be like a shark, son,’ my father told me. ‘Never stop moving forward or you die.’

  He was really good at giving idiomatic advice. Pretty crap at listening to it.

  After my father lost his job when I was fifteen years old, he used the time available during the day to drink and hate my mother – and, by extension, me.

  That sounds simple and it seems like it would have had a simple solution. I could have moved back in with her, but he was a drowning man and every time he did something that made me threaten to leave, he would hold up his hands and cling to me as he cried about how badly his life had turned out.

  By then I had been living with him for over a year and I didn’t want to go back to rules a
nd regulations. I didn’t tell her the extent of what was happening with my father. ‘She will love the fact that I’ve lost my job. It will make her so happy to see me suffer,’ he told me, his green eyes droopy with fatigue and alcohol, his hair greasy because there was no reason to shower if he didn’t have work.

  ‘I won’t tell her.’

  ‘You’re a good kid. I’ll get back on my feet again soon.’ He was positive about getting a job after his fourth beer. Not so positive after his seventh. He lost the job because the manager of an appliance store needs to be able to account for missing stock. And because a beautiful woman is always worthy of an expensive gift. I only put those things together later. He could have bluffed his way into a new job but he turned up to a few too many interviews slightly hungover because, ‘Your bitch of a mother has sapped my confidence. If it weren’t for her, I would have had my own shop.’

  He aged as I watched him, day by day and week by week, only happy when he had enough beers in him to point out all the things my mother had done to screw up his life.

  ‘And she wouldn’t have another kid.’

  ‘And she hated cooking.’

  ‘And she was just lazy and didn’t want to get a proper job.’

  ‘And, and, and.’ He never ran out of complaints about her.

  I could see, on some level, that he was blaming her for his mistakes, but then I would go visit her and she would say, ‘You don’t want to turn out like your father. You need to study to get somewhere in life. I want you to have choices. You need to stop hanging out with those boys, they’re not good people. Maybe you should get a haircut, perhaps you should join a gym…’ and on and on. I didn’t care if what she was saying was right or not. Telling someone else how to live their life is never right, and I imagined that once I found a woman who I could be with, she would not be that kind of woman. Children are not chess pieces, but back and forth I went between them, until that wasn’t possible anymore.