The Piper's Son

by Melina Marchetta

  He presses the send button and his fingers are shaking. Like always, he regrets the pressing of send, but he doesn’t care. Mohsin the Ignorer is in his way, and he shoves past him and just walks out. Except he can’t go home because the enemy is in the house and there is no way he’s turning up at the Union. Ned and Stani have probably got the police out after him anyway. But Tom doesn’t care. They can go to hell. Everyone can. If Georgie wants her beloved brother staying with her, she can forget about Tom.

  He fights the urge to go back to his old flat. He just wants to get wasted and not think so much. Except the more time goes by, the more he despises his ex-flatmates. All they’d be is a reminder of what a soft cock he was all that time he lived with them. How they stole from Stani. How they used to boast about pissing on the toilet seat if they knew it was Justine or Francesca’s turn to clean it at work. How they didn’t tell him about Jimmy’s pop. He remembers the note Jimmy Hailler left in his family’s post box two years ago. Don’t know what to say, Mackee, except if I had to wish for anything at the moment, it would be that this hadn’t happened to you and yours. With all the shit in Jimmy Hailler’s life, he would have wasted his one and only wish on Tom. Yet one year later, when the only person in Jimmy’s life died, Tom was nowhere around. What a piece of shit he was.

  He goes back to their old house next door to Mrs. Liu, where some other Tom is living with his dirty family, not knowing that just around the corner is a catastrophic event that’s going to change everything. Tom wants to knock on the door and warn the poor bastard. That it’s all make-believe what they’re doing in there, playing happy families. It’s all coming to pieces. Any minute now. He begins pulling out the dead flowers from the potted plants lining the brick balcony, and one smashes on the ground and he hurls the pieces across the front lawn. Then someone calls the cops. Probably thinks he’s trying to rob the place. It’s my home, he wants to shout, and they end up bringing him in, maybe because he throws a punch when one of them puts his hand on his shoulder.

  Siobhan Sullivan’s father is the head of the cop shop in Newtown and he doesn’t say much and writes nothing down.

  He looks at the details in front of him and looks back to Tom.

  “This where you used to live?” he asks, because he’d know. He knew every single detail about Siobhan’s friends. It’s why she’s in London still. So she could escape.

  “You want me to take you home, Tom?” he asks.

  Tom shakes his head.

  “Who are you staying with?”

  He doesn’t respond. Why can’t he just walk off the face of this world without Francesca turning up to hospitals, and Georgie living around the corner and Siobhan Sullivan’s father now having a tail on him?

  “Are you staying with Georgie Finch, Tom? Are you staying with your aunt?”

  He nods. It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk. He just doesn’t have the energy to.

  “I’ll get one of the boys to drop you off, Tom. How about that? Maybe we can talk tomorrow after you get some sleep. You look like you need some sleep, mate.”

  When he gets in, the house is quiet, but his father comes out of the study. The cop car would have awoken him.

  “What happened?” he asks, and Tom can’t see his face in the dark.

  “Fuck off,” he says, walking up the stairs.

  He dreams of his footy team. Someone’s chanting the Tigers’ theme in his ear, but there’s no image. A dream with the sound but no picture. And then he realizes that it’s his phone. His hand reaches out to the bedside table and he mutters a hello.

  “I don’t have much credit left so you’re going to have to ring me,” he hears a voice say.

  “Tara!”

  And then she hangs up.

  He dives for the light but then remembers that he doesn’t have credit and he trips out of bed, desperate to get to a phone. He flies down the stairs and bursts into Georgie’s room.

  “I need your phone.”

  “Get out, Tom!” he hears Sam say in a strained voice and he steps back outside again, taking deep breaths.

  Yes, everyone, he’ll say. Sam and Georgie are having sex these days. Pretty embarrassing all round, but that doesn’t stop him from knocking again.

  “I really need the phone.”

  It hits him hard in the face, and he fumbles to catch it and flies up the stairs again.

  He goes back to his mobile, searches for her number, and then begins to dial.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “I just walked in on Georgie and Sam doing the deed.”

  He doesn’t know why he says that. Maybe because the shock of it has just hit him.

  “Justine and Frankie want to know why you didn’t come into work this week,” she says.

  “Have you spoken to them?”

  “No. They texted. Siobhan too. Something about her father arresting you.”

  He can’t believe these girls. Separated by the Timor Sea and the Indian Ocean and they can still keep each other informed at the speed of lightning.

  “I just needed to know you were okay,” she says.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Good.”

  “So how are things?”

  “I’m not talking to you, Thomas, so no small talk.”

  Shit, she’s calling him Thomas. But how can such a snippy voice do crazy things to his blood flow?

  “Fair enough.”

  There’s silence and then he sighs, because he needs to know.

  “When I rang you that night I cut my head open, what did I say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, really. I need to know.”

  He’s begging God that he didn’t make a fool of himself. Not with her.

  “I didn’t declare my love for you or anything like that?” he asks in a ridiculous jocular voice.

  “No, you didn’t.”

  Relief.

  “So I rang and said nothing?”

  “Nothing at all, Thomas.”

  He can sense she’s about to say something and it seems like hours rather than seconds.

  “Nothing? Are you sure?”

  He wants to ask what made her say the words “Talk to me, Thomas. Talk to me.”

  “You cried,” she says, her voice so gentle it kills him. Tara Finke doesn’t do gentle. Tara Finke does practical, or abrupt, or furious, or passionate. But the gentleness in her voice undoes him.

  “Sorry,” he mutters. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. This will cost you a fortune, so you better go.”

  Say something, he tells himself. Don’t let it end this way.

  “Are you going to write or are you going to spend the rest of eternity ignoring my e-mails?” he asks huskily.

  “I don’t ignore them. I just choose not to respond to them and if you ever write me another one like today’s, where you go on about oblivion and stuff, Tom, I swear to God I’ll come back there and show you oblivion. And I’ll make sure it hurts. Stop feeling so bloody sorry for yourself. You just piss me off, honest you do.”

  She hangs up.

  He feels shock at first. Perhaps a bit of anger. He’s stunned. But his heart’s hammering with hope. In Tara Finke language, that conversation was progress.

  If he can still piss her off, then it’s a whole lot better than indifference.

  Georgie’s felt it coming for days now, ever since she received the e-mail from Joe’s girl. Ever since she discovered that Dominic coming home doesn’t mean the end of the pain. She puts the blanket over her head and just wants everything to stop, but Dominic is there, or maybe Tom, and she’s trying to explain but then she realizes that it’s like one of those hallucinations. It’s like she’s explained it, but she’s in the same spot and she’s explained nothing.

  “Georgie.” She hears Dominic’s voice from the door, then knocking and walking in, and she realizes it’s Tom who’s been with her for a while, asking her if she’s okay.

  “Georgie, is ever
ything okay with the baby?” her brother asks.

  Oh, God, she’s forgotten about the baby.

  “Georgie, is everything okay with the baby?” he repeats.

  She manages a nod and Dominic gently pulls her up. He looks so sad; she can see that in this afternoon light.

  “Georgie. You have to get out of bed.”

  It’s the same voice she remembers from her childhood. The one of authority.

  “Later.” She says it in a whisper.

  “She’ll get out of bed later,” she hears Tom say. “She’s fine. Let her sleep.”

  “No. Now, Georgie,” Dom says firmly.

  She doesn’t move. Tom’s right. She’ll get out of bed later.

  “Georgie, I have to go to my AA meeting and I need you to come with me, now. I can’t do this on my own.”

  “I’ll look after her,” Tom’s saying, panic in his voice. “She’ll get out of bed later. Don’t bully her.”

  She feels Dominic’s hands cup her face. “Please, Georgie. I need you to come with me. I can’t do this on my own.”

  After the meeting, down at the Stanmore Community Hall, Dom sits with her in the park.

  “What happened?” he asks her quietly.

  She shakes her head and closes her eyes, and the tears are there.

  “Just a bad day.” Her voice has no volume, no energy. “Where’s Sam?”

  She knows she’s asked that same question a few times now. She remembers that he’s answered, but she can’t remember what the answer is.

  “In Melbourne for work. Come on, Georgie. What sent you over the edge?”

  She can see her house from where they sit. She’s left the light on in her room and she wants to go back there and shut the door.

  “Did I not go to work today?”

  “It’s Saturday. You didn’t go yesterday. Talk to me, Georgie, or I’ll have to take you to Lucia’s.”

  There’s panic in his voice.

  “I got an e-mail the other day,” she says. “From Ana Vanquez.”

  He thinks for a moment. “Joe’s girl?”

  She nods.

  “And I was happy for her, honest I was, Dom. She had written to me a while back and told me about this lovely man she had met back in Spain and now they’re having a . . .”

  She can’t say the words and he tries to put his arm around her, but she doesn’t want it there. Why is it that Sam’s the only one who understands that she doesn’t want arms placed around her every time she wants to talk? That every time arms are placed around her, she stops talking.

  “I just want him back, Dom,” she sobs. “Why can’t we have him back? Why can’t that baby be his? It should be his!”

  He nods. At least family members don’t use shit clichés.

  “She wants me to tell Mummy and Bill . . . but I can’t.”

  “I will.”

  She lays her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes.

  “Can I love my baby if I loved Joe?” she whispers.

  “Oh, God, Georgie. Don’t even ask that.”

  They sit for a while and she hears the sprinklers come on illegally in someone’s backyard. She reaches over and takes his hand, because he seems to be in another miserable world.

  “You and Jacinta? Is it worse than I think it is?” she asks.

  He doesn’t respond.

  “She told me you were in contact six months ago,” Georgie continues. “And that she lets you speak to Anabel, but not to her just yet.”

  He laughs, bitterly.

  “I’d been sober for two minutes, and thought I could just drive up there and collect them.”

  There’s more silence and she squeezes his hand.

  “Do you know what she said?” he asks.

  Georgie shakes her head.

  “‘Returning home is my decision to make, Dom,’ she said. ‘Not yours. And if you come and get me, I’ll never forgive you. If you take this decision away from me like you did before, I’ll never forgive you for Tom.’”

  Georgie watches as he focuses on the merry-go-round in front of them. She shivers. It always looks creepy at night without kids playing on it.

  “And I didn’t get what she meant,” he says. “At first I thought it was about me walking out on Tom six weeks after she took Anabel away. I thought it was about the drinking, but then something told me that it was more than that. And I’ve spent this whole time trying to work it out. How far back do I go?”

  His head is in his hands and sometimes he’s muffled and she has to lean closer to hear him.

  “And I went all the way back to when we were twenty,” he says, his voice still bitter. “Four generations of housing commission and welfare, and Jacinta Louise, the wonder girl, wins a scholarship to Sydney Uni from the western suburbs of Brisbane, and two and a half years in, I get her pregnant.”

  “Oh, Dom, don’t do this,” Georgie mutters.

  “I remember the look on her parents’ faces when they drove down. Shit, Georgie. She was one of five girls to make it to Year Eleven at her school, because everyone else got knocked up or were off their faces on drugs by the time they were fourteen. Even the nuns wouldn’t let her out of their sight. And I swore to them all, on my family’s honor, that I wouldn’t let her drop out of uni and that I’d take care of everything. For years people would go on about how I threw it in so my wife could finish her degree. I was Mr. Wonderful.”

  He shakes his head with disbelief.

  “You know what I think, Georgie? That I wanted to throw it in. And worse still, she didn’t want all that. Not with a baby on the way. We made the plans, but no one asked Jacinta Louise what she wanted. What if all she wanted was to be at home with her boy?”

  He looks at her for the first time, his expression so pained as he rubs his hands over his mouth. “While I was telling her to get the baby on the bottle because it wouldn’t work if she was still breastfeeding him. So it makes sense that six months ago, she’s crying on the phone, Georgie, and I heard the anger when she said, ‘If you take this decision away from me, like you did before, I’ll never forgive you for Tom.’”

  Georgie closes her eyes. She wants to be one of those ventriloquist dolls and have someone put the right words in her mouth.

  “Okay,” she acknowledges. “Maybe. But she’s my best friend, Dom, and we’ve covered every conversation there is to cover over the last twenty-two years. Believe me, I know things about your sex life that I should not know.”

  He glances at her and she almost laughs at the look of horror.

  “But Jacinta’s said it to me before. That she was never happier than the time when we all lived in that dump in Camperdown after Tommy was born. And how your uni mates couldn’t grasp the fact that you weren’t studying law anymore and they spent most of their time with us in that mad house listening to Joy Division and the Pretenders and drinking and having arguments about politics and religion, and how we’d watch Rage every Sunday morning and then we’d wrap up Tommy and go to Mass. And if it wasn’t for the fact that she hadn’t met Anabel Georgia yet, she’d want to go back to those years and not move an inch. Because she had her gorgeous boy and you.”

  She presses a kiss to his arm. “Jacinta loved that she got to use her brains, Dom, and she loved that Tom and you were inseparable for those years. ‘Better than men who don’t get to know their kids,’ she’d say. Don’t take that away from yourself just because of what’s happened in the last two years.”

  He’s still stooped over and she puts her arms around his back and leans her head against him. They stay like that for a while.

  “So what’s the deal with you and Sam?” he asks later.

  “So what is the deal with me and Sam?” she asks tiredly. “Are you shocked?”

  “Who wouldn’t be? It’s amazing.”

  “The baby?”

  “No. I just can’t get over your boobs.”

  She laughs and sits up, looking down at them.

  “Aren’t they fantastic? B cup and growin
g.”

  “You don’t get to keep them. You know that, don’t you, G?”

  And then she’s laughing some more, because that’s the closest she’s got to hearing Dominic’s real personality. The dry drawl in his voice. The shit-stirrer extraordinaire.

  “I’m going to breast-feed this kid until he’s in kindergarten.”

  He pulls her gently to her feet and they cross the road, looking up at the front veranda. “Have you seen the way he looks at me?” Dominic asks quietly. She knows he’s talking about his son.

  They walk up the steps of the terrace, where Tom sits smoking a cigarette in the dark, putting it out quickly before she gets to him.

  “Don’t leave butts in my potted plants,” she says firmly.

  “You’ve killed them all anyway,” he mutters, but she catches the relief in his eyes and holds out a hand to him, which he grips for a moment before she goes inside, their fingers lingering like she’d let them when he was a kid.

  When Tom can hear her safely in the kitchen, he looks up at his father.

  “Is she okay?”

  Dominic shrugs. “For the time being.”

  “Sam rang. He’s really pissed that you took her to . . . a meeting.”