by Zane Menzy
He knew his father didn’t care if he watched the videos. The embarrassing man had even told Matt when he’d set the couch up down here, “I’ve set up the basement real good, Matty. It’s our bachelor pad. You can take birds down there or watch movies anytime you like.” Matt had groaned and rolled his eyes at the invite. There was no fucking way he would use the basement while his father was in the house. That would feel too fucking weird, beating off, hearing his father’s fat footsteps in the lounge above.
Matt hadn’t seen his father all day—no doubt at the pub, his home away from home. At forty-five-years-old, Glen Andrews may have been the owner of a rotten liver but he had a heart of gold.
∞
For such a good person, Matt’s father had terrible luck. He worked hard for peanuts at his shitty factory job, not once getting a promotion. At nineteen he suffered a knee injury ending a promising rugby career, slowly sending his once muscled physique to flabby rolls. At forty-two he lost his first-born son—Matt’s big brother, Aaron—to a motorcycle accident, and now he had the added hurt and humiliation of his wife leaving him for her female jogging partner. Matt knew that his father’s epitaph would read life isn’t fair.
In hindsight, perhaps it wasn’t a surprise his mother leaving. She had never been the same since Aaron died. Aaron had been her favourite; it had always been obvious. Cheeky rascal Aaron could do no wrong in her eyes—despite the fact he was naughty as hell and always up to no good.
When Aaron started smoking at fourteen, their mother scolded him for all of ten minutes before going out and buying him a packet. Three years later when she busted Matt puffing on a cigarette, she slapped it out of his hand and grounded him for a week. It was this blatant favouritism that made Matt gravitate towards his laidback father.
Aaron shared more in common with their parents. All three were confident, humorous, sports-mad extroverts. The only trait Matt shared with his family was the same sense of irreverent humour—that was unavoidable with the Andrews gene pool.
At home, Matt joked about as much as the rest of his family, but away from the house, he was shy and reserved, something his outgoing mother found infuriating. She would lose her cool with him often, “You need to grow up, Matt. Get out there and talk to people. Be more like your brother.”
Truth was, Matt did wish he was more like his brother. Aaron had been popular, had loads of friends, was invited to parties and always had girls after him. Matt had none of these blessings.
One issue of being so different from his brother was that they didn’t always get along. Often, they would have scraps over the most pointless things; Who got to wash the dishes and who got to dry? Who got to sit closer to the television? Who was better between Kurt Cobain or Billy Corbin? Crap like that.
At the time Matt would sometimes wish he didn’t have a brother, that he was an only child, free to be the favourite without competition. Not now. Now he would do anything to have Aaron back, even just to have another argument.
Despite their constant bickering, Aaron did have his good points. He would buy Matt smokes in exchange for cleaning his room, he never minded if Matt borrowed his CD’s or magazines and he never let Matt talk badly about himself. If Matt ever rereferred to himself as a loser, Aaron would whack him and say, “Nobody on my team is a fucking loser. It’s the fucking rule. Give yourself more credit.” Matt missed having Aaron on his team.
Aaron had been two years older than Matt and only seventeen when he died on October 17, 1994. His short crazy life ended when he collided head-on with a truck while racing along the southern motorway on a friend’s motorbike. His grizzly end had left their mother in pieces and she found escape through fitness. It began with morning jogs before she would go start her day of cleaning the houses of Port Jackson’s wealthier residents. She would come home and clean up her own house then go back out for another run. Soon the woman was running everywhere around town, competing in marathons, going away for weekend trips to race up mountains and crazy shit like that. She always insisted they didn’t need to go support her and that she was happy to travel on her own.
Now Matt and his father knew why. Stephanie—his mum’s jogging partner. She was the one accompanying Matt’s mother on all these trips, eventually convincing her to run away altogether. And run she did, after telling them both one night over dinner that she had come to the conclusion she was gay and was going to move out. She calmly finished her meal, then got up and grabbed her suitcase which was sitting, waiting for her in the hallway. Without looking back, she made her way out the door, closing her family behind her like a fuzzy memory.
Matt and his father had walked past the black and red suitcase all day without a clue why it was there—not even bothered enough to ask her about the bulging hazard in the hallway. Maybe they just assumed it was ready for another weekend trip? Matt wasn’t sure. Perhaps his mum thought if they had noticed that meant they cared? Maybe then she would have stayed? This was a question that tore at Matt if he let it. So he didn’t.
∞
Matt managed to watch three films while his father was out. Each one bringing him to a grunting climax that left him with sticky cum-covered fingers. He was washing himself off in the bathroom when he heard his father stumble his way inside the house. Matt quickly dried his hands and walked out to the hallway where he saw his chubby father swaying side to side with a big grin on his bearded face.
“Matty my boy!” He bowled on up to Matt and held his hand out for a high-five.
Matt reluctantly slapped his father’s hand, glad the man didn’t know what had just been washed off of it. “Hey, Dad.”
“How’s your day been, son?” His father wobbled into the lounge, collapsing his chunky limbs all over the couch before scratching a hand through his thinning, brown hair.
“My day’s been good.” Matt smiled at his father who sat with a goofy grin planted on his face. “Not quite as good as yours though, by the looks.”
“What makes you say that?” His father slurred. “Is it cos I’m pisssed?”
Matt laughed, nodding. “That would be why.”
His father reached into his pocket, curling a gnarled hand around a pack of cigarettes. He extended the packet out to Matt. “Fancy one?”
Matt didn’t waste time. He reached his hand across and plucked one out. After his father pulled one out for himself and lit it; Matt lowered his head, letting his father spark his smoke to life for him.
“I have gossip for you, Matty.” His father curled his lips, looking smug.
“Yeah, what’s that?” Matt waited for his father to spout off some nonsense he probably had zero interest in.
“There is a phantom crapper in town!” His father swung his hands around like he was about to perform a magic trick.
Matt shook his head, trying not to laugh at the crazy comment. “Okay… that’s random.”
“It’s foul is what it is.” His father pursed his lips around his cigarette, taking in a deep breath of smoke before trying—and failing—to blow smoke rings. “Yep, turns out some dirty bastard has been shitting on the doorstep of your soon-to-be boss’s home.”
“The Harris’s?”
His father nodded. “Yep. Old Trevor Simpson was telling me down at the tavern that he saw Jenna Harris outside the front door of her house this morning—now that’s a fine looking woman, am I right?”
Matt gave his father the thumbs up. “For sure, Dad.”
“I tell ya, if I had my way with her, I’d be one happy chappy. I bet she wouldn’t lay there like driftwood like ya mother used to.” His father licked his lips like he could taste Mrs Harris on them.
Matt cringed, laughing. “Okay, horn dog, but what about this phantom crapper?”
“Oh, right. Well, old Trevor tells me that Jenna was swearing her nut off while cleaning the front steps to her house, so the nosey old bugger decided to walk over and ask what was wrong.” Matts father began laughing. “Well, the dumb old coot didn’t watch where he was standing and
walked right in the middle of smeared shit. Human shit none the less.”
Matt grimaced, his stomach churning.
“Anyway, while he’s wiping his foot clean on her front lawn he notices that the driveway has been graffitied with something along the lines of Jenna Harris is a whore.”
“Whoa, really?” Matt muttered.
“I shit you not, son.” They both burst out laughing at his wordplay. “So Jenna goes over and fusses over Trevor and she tells him—under the strictest of confidence—that this is the fifth time their house has been crapped on this month.”
“I wonder who she’s annoyed.”
“Or her rip-off husband. The man’s a shark, who knows who he’s crossed.”
“Is he? Why?” Matt asked, genuinely intrigued.
“He’s a lawyer and a rich prick, all of them are fucking sharks. Never trust a man with more money than sense.”
Matt nodded to his father’s spiel, wishing he was a person with more money than sense himself. Especially if it meant he got a wife as hot as Jenna Harris.
“So be warned, Matty boy. You could end up cleaning up after this phantom crapper when you start working there.”
“No fucking way am I cleaning up human shit. Nope, not happening!” Matt shook his head and threw his hands in the air, his cigarette’s grey wisps wafted like a swirling wave.
His father laughed. “Oh, calm down. I doubt you’ll have to, but even if you did, you just hose it away.”
“Easy for you to say, you’re not the one doing it.”
“Harden up, saggy bollocks. I had to wipe you and your brother’s arses when you were babies, nothing to it.”
Matt rolled his eyes. “That’s a bit different, Dad.”
“You’re telling me, at least you’re getting paid.” He burst out laughing at his own joke. “Anyway, you need this job. I can’t—”
“You can’t afford to keep me now that we’ve lost mum’s income. Yes, I know.” Matt finished his father’s sentence for him, he had lectured Matt about it enough.
“That’s not what I was going to say at all, smart arse,” his father said, his bloodshot eyes looking wounded.
“Sorry, what were you going to say?”
“I was going to say I can’t…” his father paused, “Let my son miss out on the chance to bring his old man home a pair of Jenna Harris’s knickers.” His father slapped his knee, roaring with laughter.
Matt gasped at the comment, then chuckled. “You’re a dirty bastard.”
“That I am, son.” He took a puff on his cigarette. “And, I know you are too! The apple didn’t fall far from this tree.”
CHAPTER FOUR:
Mother of the year
Damon sped along the motorway heading into Auckland city. The orange streetlights above the road glared down like floating planets. He had his car stereo pumped up as loud as it could go, playing the angriest music he could find on the radio.
He was still bloody livid about what he had seen written on the driveway that morning. The bright pink spray-painted sprawling that screamed to the world his mother was a whore was bad enough but then to have their front steps smeared in human shit—again—was downright fucking feral.
His mother insisted—once she had stopped screaming—that he should just forget about it, that she would clean up the mess. Damon’s father was just as useless, he barely blinked at the tarnished driveway and muttered little more than an, “Oh dear.”
Damon wasn’t surprised to see such a pussyfooted reaction from his father, the man was a wet blanket, but his mother’s lack of fire concerned him. Despite her poise and stiff upper lip, the woman had that quintessential fighter ingredient—a bit of mongrel. Jenna didn’t take shit from anybody. Yet now, here she was, willing to accept it on her fucking doorstep.
Damon knew exactly who was responsible. Well, he wasn’t exactly sure, but he knew it had to be either his father’s ex-wife Sally or one of his hideous half-siblings; Michael and Marissa. They still hated Damon’s mother after all this time despite the pair of them being nearly thirty-years old, and they never failed to make their disdain for her known if they passed her in the street.
Damon’s older brother and sister may have carried the same blood in their veins as he did, but they refused to acknowledge it. As they grew older, they refused to come stay for weekends, and would only visit on the understanding that their father was home alone. Jenna, Damon and Victoria each had to be out of the house.
This didn’t bother Damon particularly, he had no desire to get to know the critters. Marissa had just had a baby, making Damon’s father a grandparent for the first time. Damon had yet to see his baby nephew, Jack, and there was every chance he never would considering the hostility between the old and new families.
Baby Jack’s arrival had made things at home especially frosty between Damon’s parents. Jenna was trying to get on with life after losing a daughter, while Damon’s father was suddenly reconnecting with his older children, playing the role of doting “Poppa.” Would his brother and sister try attacking his mother while she was in a moment of weakness? Of course they fucking would, Damon answered himself.
But something didn’t sit right. Yes, any one of the three would be nasty enough to write what was written on the driveway, but he couldn’t imagine any of them smearing shit on the steps. That seemed an act which would be below his pretentious siblings and their snooty mother.
Damon thought about this; how would he react if he were in their shoes? Nursing a grudge after all these years. It dawned on him that he was in their shoes. He too was pretentious, he too was snooty, he too felt angry.
He wanted to avenge his mother’s smeared name, and he realised that maybe when you are that angry you would sink as low as a sewer of shit—regardless of how decent or well-to-do, you think you are.
Damon took the Northshore off ramp, turning down a no-end street, did a U-turn and headed straight back to the northern motorway, speeding towards Port Jackson. He suddenly felt the need to use the toilet, and he knew exactly where.
∞
When Damon got home, he saw his mum on the telephone. She glared at him with a flicker of fury before rolling her eyes. Damon knew who would be on the other line. His father’s ex-wife, Sally, calling to inform them of the nasty surprise she had found on her driveway in the form of Damon doing his belt up after taking a dump. Not his finest hour but he felt better knowing someone had stood up for his mum—or squatted down as the case may be—and let Sally and her brood know that Damon and his mother were not to be messed with.
“I am sorry Sally but are you sure it was Damon?” Jenna asked, sighing into the phone. His mother nodded along to the heated phone call. She took a deep breath. “Gee, that’s rich describing him as a little monster, Sally, when it’s your two who look like they hide under children’s beds.”
Damon put a hand over his mouth, trying to stop himself from laughing.
“Yes, of course… mmm hmm… well, absolutely it makes sense that he learnt how to creep around in the dark… from a what did you say? A slut like me?” Jenna laughed, not letting the former Mrs Harris know she was getting annoyed. “I will ask Damon about it when he gets home from his weekend in Sydney. Yes, that’s right. Sydney! He’s been there since Thursday so unless he has magical powers, I think it’s safe to say that you were dreaming or you’re that damned old now the dementias kicking in. Good night, please don’t call here again.” On that sour kick, Jenna hung up the phone.
Damon finally let out his laughter, clutching at his ribs. “Wow, Jenna, that was classic!”
She narrowed her eyes at him, walked across the kitchen tiles in heated steps and whacked him hard on the shoulder. “What the bloody hell were you thinking, Damon.” She whacked him again, even harder.
“Ough! Stop hitting me,” Damon whined, still laughing.
“No, Damon, this is not funny!” Her face began to soften then her hand rolled into a fist and punched his shoulder in a surprise attack. “
You moron!”
Damon stopped laughing, rubbing his injured shoulder. “That fucking hurt, Jenna.”
“Good. It was meant to.” She walked over to a small wine rack beside the pantry and retrieved a bottle of red wine. Jenna promptly filled herself a glass which she sloshed around before taking a hearty mouthful.
Damon waited, wondering if the booze would calm her down.
Jenna spun ‘round giving him a death stare. “Didn’t I tell you not to do anything about this? Hmm?” She glared at him, tapping her foot impatiently.
“Yeah, but—”
“But nothing, Damon,” she hissed. “I know you think because you’re about to turn 18 that somehow you’re a big man now, but when I tell you not to do something, then you damn well bloody listen and DON’T do anything.” She took another scull on her wine.
Damon sneered. “Why are you being so mental? It’s the fifth time this month someone’s shit on our driveway and you know it will be Sally or one of them. Why aren’t you doing anything about it and getting the troll back?”
Jenna nibbled on her lip, shaking her head. “Look. I appreciate you wanting to defend my honour—unlike your useless father—but I can take care of my own battles, Damon.”
“Then, why aren’t you? Why are you being such a pussy?” Damon stared at her with desperate eyes, not sure where the Jenna was that he knew; his mum.
Jenna looked stunned by the accusing question. She rolled the wine around in her glass, looking him in his sparkling green eyes that matched the colour of her own. “Because quite honestly, I don’t think it was them. They haven’t given us trouble for years—they might do again now, all thanks to you though.” Jenna paused, looking out the window. She lowered her voice, “Sally even sent a condolence card with lovely flowers when Victoria passed away. I really think she has let go of the past.”