Love, Charlie Mike

by Kate de Goldi

  ‘Sixty billion bonus points to me for persistence,’ said Finn, coming into my room after dinner. He was wearing his shades and hat again.

  ‘Bugger off.’

  ‘You can put Anne of Thingy away. Your grandfather wasn’t retarded.’ He stood in front of my mirror trying different poses with the glasses, different angles for the hat.

  ‘One interesting thing,’ he went on when I didn’t answer. ‘Everything that Dad said corroborated what Gran had said.’

  ‘Corroborated. That’s a big word for a little boy.’

  ‘So we probably can trust what she says about the past.’

  ‘I already told you that.’

  ‘Well, you’re right.’ He dabbed his neck with one of my perfumes. ‘Dad’s right about you.’ I jumped off the bed and grabbed at him. ‘You’re essentially a perverse creature,’ he said, holding on tight to the bottle, ducking. ‘Fickle. No staying power.’ I twisted his arm and he tried to kick me.

  ‘Fuck off, Noddy,’ I said, furious with him. ‘Go and play something homoerotic with one of your creepy little friends.’

  ‘The men of this family,’ he tried not to wince as I squeezed his arm, ‘the men of this family see things through to the end. Not hurting! You’re not hurting me!’

  I aimed a kick at his balls but he jack-knifed in time and pulled out of my grip. I decided to kill him.

  ‘Listen, Noddy,’ I said, hating him with my whole being. I wanted to punch his face, pull out his shiny blue eyes, hit his grinning mouth, kneecap him, anything. ‘The men in this family are no advertisement for anything.’ I was screaming. ‘You’re doomed. Hear that, Noddy?’ We were up against the wall now, wrestling murderously. Finn had hold of my hair which always maddened me beyond reason. I tried to bite his shoulder, his neck, his chest. I tried to bang his head against the wall. I was so determined to annihilate him that I didn’t hear the door open.

  ‘Children!’ shouted Dad. ‘Break it up! Break it UP!’

  We took absolutely no notice of him and eventually he separated us.

  ‘Are you sixteen or six?’ he said to me.

  ‘Get stuffed!’ I was panting, teary with rage.

  ‘Bit of a workout,’ said Finn, grinning. He never got angry when we fought; it made me hate him even more. ‘Keeping our hand in.’

  ‘Get out!’ I shouted. ‘Get out of my room!’

  Finn ambled to the door, softly whistling ‘Yesterday’.

  ‘GET OUT!’

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ said Dad, heaving a sigh.

  ‘Both of you!’

  ‘What’s going on, for God’s sake?’ said Mum, appearing in the doorway. She looked at Dad. ‘How come you’re back so soon?’

  ‘Came to get my painting goggles and I find a Third World War going on.’

  ‘Why do you need your painting goggles?’

  ‘Nearly got my eye twice the other day, with Gav, so I thought I’d practise a bit with protection. Can’t be too careful.’

  ‘You’re an idiot, said Mum, laughing. She hugged him.

  I stared at them with loathing. And then I lost it.

  ‘You are deranged!’ I shouted at Dad. ‘You’re a ludicrous apology for a grown man. You are pathetic! Get out! Get out of my room!’ I launched myself at the three of them, palms raised, pushing them bodily. ‘Go on, get out, all of you! You’re all pathetic. I hate you all!’ I shoved them into the hallway, slammed the door and sank down behind it onto the floor, exhausted by fury.

  ‘What the hell’s eating her?’ I heard Dad say. There were impenetrable murmurings. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘falling in love’s supposed to sweeten your mood, isn’t it?’

  Murmur, murmur, murmur.

  Retreating steps, the faint whistled strains of ‘Yesterday’.

  Dear Sonny, I wrote, wiping tears, I WISH YOU WERE HERE. I MISS YOU SO MUCH. Sometimes I can hardly remember what you look like.

  It’s all the wrong way round — you’re not here and I miss you, my family are here and they’re all IMPOSSIBLE, including Mum. She just colludes with Dad’s ridiculous behaviour. Finn is a pain in the arse and Gran is crazy. I’m going to get them all exploding presents for Xmas.

  I sound completely childish, don’t I? Hard to stay sweet-natured and rational battling these sort of domestic odds.

  April seems a very long time away.

  I think of you all the time, love, Charlie Mike. XXX

  As soon as I’d dropped that letter in the slot outside the Central PO, I regretted it.

  ‘Shit,’ I said to Brenna. ‘I wish I hadn’t done that.’

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ she said, pulling my sleeve. ‘You’re a wet blanket today. What’re you going to do? Stick y’arm down the slot? Demand it back?’

  ‘It was such a negative letter,’ I said, walking slowly, not wanting to leave the slot. ‘It was so moany.’

  ‘So write another one, tell him to ignore it. Don’t worry about it. And pull yourself together or I’m cancelling our friendship.’

  It was Christmas Eve eve and Brenna had convinced me to take a day off, come shopping with her. I had told Finn in my coldest voice he could do Gran by himself for the day.

  ‘Yes, Lord Vader,’ he said, smiling sepulchrally. It was our first exchange in three days.

  Naturally, since I had the day off, it was overcast, threatening rain.

  ‘Still hate your family?’ Brenna asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Least you’ve got one to hate.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘Let’s have a fag and work out a shopping strategy.’

  We leaned over the Hereford Street Bridge, smoking, watching the ducks float effortlessly upstream, unhurried, oblivious to the frantic retailing spirit infecting the rest of the city. The footpaths were crowded, horns blasted, people glared as they pushed past.

  ‘I don’t even want to give them any presents,’ I said.

  ‘Better to be safe than sorry. You might be suddenly overcome with peace and goodwill on Christmas morning and regret it if you don’t have anything. That’s my policy. I’m even getting the odious stepmother something. Something double-edged of course. An anti-aging cosmetic maybe, or a novel about adultery — no, a book’d be useless, she’s virtually illiterate. C’mon, Christy,’ she shouted, startling me, ‘cheer up! Hasn’t Sonny Boy written lately?’

  ‘Yeah, but he doesn’t say much. He doesn’t say what’s really happening. I haven’t really got a clue what goes on over there unless I read the paper. And that’s scary. And I don’t know how he’s feeling. He’s sort of cryptic. And I just burble on with a load of crap. It’s like we’re not really connecting, you know?’

  ‘Look, four months and he’ll be back. Then you can connect in the time-honoured way.’ She grinned at me. ‘Eh? Eh, girl? Only one hundred and twenty days.’

  ‘Only? A third of a year.’

  She threw down her cigarette butt and ground it underfoot. ‘Enough of the morbidity! C’mon, we’re going to Canterbury Sport. I’m getting me Da the sort of present he deserves. A clichéd present for a living cliché.’

  ‘Sports socks?’

  ‘Golf balls,’ said Brenna, pulling me across the road on the green light. ‘And you can get yours a tennis ball or two.’

  ‘He’s already got thousands — he marks all of them with a vivid, so they don’t get mixed up with the club balls inside Beryl the Ball Breaker.’

  ‘That is sad,’ said Brenna dolefully, taking this news in exactly the spirit it was delivered.

  On the way we stopped at Elgregoe’s Magic Shop and I bought a bright pink wig and ghoul mask for Finn. He wanted a CD of Bolivian music, but too bad. Brenna bought a fake dog turd and some foaming sugar to try on her stepmother. These purchases cheered me up and by the time we got to Canterbury Sport and Brenna asked the salesman for a packet of golf bollocks I was ready for some of our best hysteria.

  ‘Bollocks to bollocks, ashes to ashes,’ she said, dropping the package into her bag. W
e bent over laughing, not caring about the looks we got.

  ‘Hey, hey—’ I gripped her arm, leaned into her, laughing almost too much to get the words out. ‘Fantastic … idea. I’ll get … my father a box to protect his bollocks!’

  We crouched in the cricket section, the very sight of the oval, padded boxes in their plastic bags a huge comedy.

  ‘This is truly the perfect present,’ I said, comparing the relative sizes of a Youth and a Men’s. ‘He’s always going on about the killers at Interclub, smashing the ball straight for your goolies.’

  ‘Look at this one,’ squeaked Brenna, ‘Extra large. Can you believe it? This is your one, girl.’ She held up a contraption so ludicrous we collapsed all over again. It was differently designed from the others, elongated and more bulbous, at least twenty centimetres long. Perfect.

  ‘Had fun, girls?’ said the salesman, very sarcastic.

  ‘Most entertaining,’ said Brenna smoothly, her brogue thick. ‘All things considered, though,’ she said, as I took the package from the man, ‘all things considered, there’s a sight more entertainment in the actual member coiled behind the box. Don’t ya think?’

  We were still laughing five hours later, riding home on the bus, our bags filled with frivolous presents, our stomachs full of souvlaki, ice cream, liquorice, Mary Gray fudge.

  I felt restored; cruisy and forgiving towards my family, patient about Sonny. A day away had even made me feel slightly fond of Gran.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about the bastard line,’ said Brenna.

  ‘Not that,’ I said. ‘My mind’s a nice soggy pudding. It doesn’t wanna think at the moment.’

  ‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘you’re doing it backwards. Before you start looking for grandfathers, you should make sure that old Pops really wasn’t, if you get me.’

  ‘Mmmmm.’

  ‘I mean, how do your folks know? They must have some hard evidence; there must be some thing or story or whatever. You should ask your mother first, then start looking for the other old man. The Bert crisis was silly. Waste of time. Anyway, that’s what I think. Are you asleep?’ She whacked me in the ribs.

  ‘You know buses always make me sleepy,’ I murmured, with great effort.

  I dreamt about Sonny that night, a vivid, wrenching drama, tears close to the surface.

  He was still in Bosnia, and I was there, too. We sat together in a tent with a crowd of other soldiers and women, watching The Blues Brothers on a big screen. Sonny and all the soldiers wore baggy Jake-and-Elwood suits, black hats and shades. When the concert in the film began we cleared the chairs away and started to dance. I waited for Sonny to pull me close, move me round in that liquid way he did, but, though he held my hands, he seemed very distant, much taller and broader, serious-faced.

  ‘Still on a Mission from God?’ I joked, trying to make him smile. It worried me that I couldn’t see his eyes behind the shades.

  ‘At least you know about my mission,’ he said, loosening his hands. Another soldier cut in and Sonny went off to dance with a different woman. I tried desperately to see what she looked like but her face was hidden against his chest. He was kissing the top of her dark head.

  I woke, sick and sweaty, relieved it was only a dream. But lying there wide-eyed in the dark wasn’t much better, because in a while I started torturing myself with jealous fantasies — Sonny and countless beautiful Bosnian women, Sonny and female peacekeepers, Sonny and a line-up of spunky UN employees.

  Brenna would’ve been impressed by the extent and energy of my imagination but I felt persecuted, all the calm and loving feelings of the past afternoon smashed and scattered.

  I got out of bed, turned on my desk lamp and wrote quickly.

  Dear Sonny, It’s 4 a.m. and I’m writing this after a bizarre dream about you. What do you dream about? Here or there? Greymouth? Burnham? Radovan? Slobodan? Me?

  Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve but I guess you won’t get this for ten days — Happy Christmas anyway — your first white one.

  I miss you. Love, Charlie Mike XXXXX

  The words wobbled and blurred and the room seemed to hum with them as if I’d spoken them aloud. I turned off the light and fell back into bed; the dark was eerie now, full of portents. I buried my eyes in my pillow, shutting out the black, crowding quiet. I thought about a different darkness, another night, when Sonny held me close, talking softly, kissing my face, showing me how he loved me.

  He stayed only four days with his family. He arrived at our house at 6.30 on a Friday night, swiped a jonquil from the garden, slipped inside and knocked on my bedroom door.

  ‘Enter,’ I said, thinking it was Brenna. No one else ever knocked. I was lying on my bed, reading my falling-apart copy of Anne of Green Gables. Waiting for B. Day was like waiting for a death and I’d been driven to Anne Shirley for comfort. It helped me not think about Sonny in Greymouth, me in Christchurch, the time hurtling past us, unused.

  ‘Let’s do a movie, Charlie.’

  I threw Anne into the corner and jumped up, ecstatic at the sight of him, here, in my room, holding out a jonquil, back early!

  ‘How come?’ I said, on my toes, hugging him.

  ‘Missed you,’ he said simply, kissing me.

  ‘Look who’s back,’ I said, presenting Sonny to Mum and Dad. They were in the kitchen, Dad in his whites, winding tape around the handle of his racquet; Mum, drinking wine, watching him.

  ‘Put it there, mate,’ said Dad, holding out his hand, half-hugging Sonny. ‘Feel like a hit? I’m just off to serving practice.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t feel like a hit,’ I said quickly. ‘We’re going out.’

  I put the jonquil in a vase and placed it in the middle of the table. Its perfume was strong in the warm room and I felt as though its slender singleness, its green-and-yellowness in the too-big vase in the middle of the table between my parents was like an emblem, a badge spelling Mine. It’s mine and he’s mine, see ya later.

  We drove in the direction of town, not saying much, smiling, holding hands sometimes at the lights.

  ‘What movie’re we going to?’ said Sonny.

  ‘Um—’

  When the lights turned green at the intersection of Fitzgerald and St Asaph, he turned right around the island, pulled over and stopped the car.

  ‘I don’t want to go to a movie,’ he said, looking right into my eyes.

  ‘I don’t either,’ I said, taking his hand, curling my fingers through his, prickles grabbing at my skin. We smiled and closed our fingers on each other’s and then Sonny started the car again and we drove without speaking to a motel on Papanui Road.

  ‘A motel?’ said Brenna, later — months later — when I told her. ‘Wasn’t that weird? Like, didn’t you feel like you were in Days of Our Lives, or something? Did you feel a tad sleazy?’

  ‘No,’ I said, remembering the green carpet in the room, the floral curtains, the frilly quilted bedspread, the evening drawing in, delicious and promising, and the coolness of Sonny’s hands on my face, making me flush and want to crumple, the deftness of his hands as he took off my jacket and my Cat in the Hat sweater, as he undressed the rest of me and then himself and then kissed me and kissed me until I was lying on the cold sheets with him and he kissed me some more and whispered reassuringly and stilled my shaking and kissed me again and again until I was warm all over and holding him so tight and saying fiercely to him, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’

  ‘No,’ I said to Brenna. ‘I didn’t feel sleazy. I felt as if I’d died and gone straight to heaven.’

  ‘You are my Sonny-shine,

  My only Sonny-shine

  You make me hap-peee

  When skies are graaay—

  ‘Though, actually,’ said Finn, standing in the doorway of my room, wearing his Jake hat and shades, ‘skies are blue today.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Postie-time.’ He handed me a postcard.

  ‘Are you coming to get the tree? Mum’s staying here
with Gran. And we promise not to sing war songs or annoy you in any way.’

  ‘All right.’ With a postcard to read, Christmas tomorrow, I couldn’t feel pissed off with them anymore. I even thought about dashing into town and getting Finn his Bolivian CD.

  ‘Shall we can the Gran thing till after Christmas?’ said Finn.

  ‘Yeah. Shut the door behind you, there’s a good boy.’

  Dear Charlie, I read, I’ve been dreaming about swimming in the Punakaiki — we used to bike there in the summer, camp overnight. I guess you’re not getting much swimming done. It’s bloody cold here. The action’s heated up, bastards smuggling guns through — they smile at you one day, make like your best mate, next day they’re sticking it to you.

  Christmas is a joke for most families here. Not that Muslims are into the birth of Jesus. Leave that to the ethnic-cleansing Orthodox. No doubt Grandad UN will arrange for us to distribute some presents or sweets. Farcical. My folks’ll be doing the barbecue at Runanga. I can smell the mussels.

  There’s a guy in this unit, Phil Caswell, plays anything, got a voice like Elvis — Elvis doing a ballad. He sang Cruel War the other night — you know it? The old man used to play it. Made me think of you.

  The cruel war is raging, Johnny has to fight

  I want to be with him, from morning to night.

  I want to be with him, it grieves my heart so,

  Won’t you let me go with you?

  No, my love, no.

  Love Sonny.

  I looked and looked at the squashed words — the most Sonny had ever written on one card — and tried to analyse how they made me feel. Tender? Lonely? Loved? Frustrated?

  All of the above.

  I studied the brief self-pitying letter I’d written him in the middle of the night and thought how very little it really had to do with him. We tried to talk to each other on paper, but our lines were non-convergent. Our communications flew in opposite directions, not touching as they passed, never exactly answering each other. Correspondence seemed to be the last thing they were about. Every card I got from Sonny was history — ten days’ distance from how he felt now, or then, or whatever that moment was when I read it. It was the same for anything he read from me.