Love, Charlie Mike

by Kate de Goldi

  ‘Neutered,’ Dad had cried. ‘The poor bastard felt neutered, he felt like he was a nothing. He was so humiliated he couldn’t tell his wife or his family. He arrived home to a completely unsuspecting wife. Imagine it, for Christ’s sake? The horror. The rest is tragedy,’ he said. ‘Total fucking tragedy.’

  The rest. I thought about all the rest.

  ‘I know it wouldn’t fix the past or anything …’ I looked at Finn now.

  ‘I was thinking that, too,’ said Finn. ‘It doesn’t change anything, but if he did know who his father was—’

  ‘Might help.’

  ‘You’d think it would help, eh? Make him kind of, um. Something,’ he finished lamely, shrugging.

  ‘Back to Gran.’

  ‘Mission Impossible?’

  I took the packet of scorched almonds from him, slid out the last one, nestled it into the roof of my mouth with my tongue. ‘Nope. We’ve got to find a way.’

  ‘Why do I feel a stong sense of déjà-vu?’

  ‘Why do I feel like reading all the Anne books?’

  ‘Tomorrow’sAnotherDay,’ he said, quoting Gran.

  ‘Boxing Day, in fact.’

  ‘Don’t say box!’ He went to bed laughing.

  I went to bed with an A4 pad and a pen, and did what I should have done weeks before. I wrote Dear Sonny and told him everything.

  Part Two

  Chapter Five

  At Arthur’s Pass the Japanese tour party stand in a row on the gravelly platform, pointing, staring up at the rearing bush-covered mountains, calling joyously at the beauty, the birds, the waterfalls! They wield their videos and cameras, take frame after frame.

  ‘Look at them!’ says Gran.

  I’ve tried to keep her on the train but she reads the station sign and is up, off, out onto the platform before I can locate the malted barley sugars. Then I try to divert her round the other side of the station building, pointing out the feeding kea, the last of the lupins, but her radar’s tuned for The Enemy. She’s round the corner in a moment, squint-eyed with triumph.

  ‘Gran,’ I say, my voice warning.

  ‘Don’t you talk to me about tolerance,’ she says, plucking an old conversation from her memory bank. ‘If you knew what they did in the wa—’

  ‘Everyone did bad stuff in the war,’ I hiss. ‘Even the Allies.’

  ‘They bombed Darwin!’

  ‘And Churchill obliterated Dresden!’ I can’t believe we’re having a historical debate. In vicious undertones. Luckily, few of the tour party seem to have much English. I look where they’re looking — at the mountains, the white cloud pouring over from Westland into the passes on this side — and I try to think of a way of manhandling Gran back onto the train without seeming cruel. But her own caprice saves me.

  ‘My cases,’ she says suddenly, forgetting The Enemy. ‘My suitcases?’

  ‘On the train,’ I say, ready to weep with relief. ‘They’re on the train.’

  So far, so useless, I think, when we’re back in our seats, facing each other across the table. Gran’s looking in her compact mirror, blind, apparently, to the crooked lipstick, the brown spots of face powder. Just tell me! I want to scream at her. Just open your mouth and say it, say the name, that little bit of information buried in your festering rubbish dump of a memory.

  ‘Time for another cup of tea?’ she says, beaming, all thought of the Yellow Peril wiped out. Till next time.

  ‘We’ll go through the tunnel soon,’ I say, dully. Why bother trying to have a sensible exchange? Why not just give in, carry on a parallel monologue, make random statements. It’s just as likely to work as trying to make sense of her rabbit-warren mind.

  ‘To the Other Side,’ says Gran. She says it with capital letters.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not wh—’

  ‘BegYourPardon.’

  ‘Through the tunnel to the Other Side,’ she says. ‘Over the mountain, well, under the mountain. Into the mountain. Like the Pied Piper and all the children.’ Unusually fanciful for Gran. ‘I like that tunnel. The long dark and then out to the other world. It’s like another world, you know.’

  ‘The Wet Coast.’

  ‘I like the rain. They always have good fires. Plenty of coal.’

  I shut out the picture of Sonny’s parents’ living room, the coal range, the fireplace, that particular intense coal-fired heat.

  ‘So you had good times over there?’ I can’t really see Gran the Bridge player hanging out on the Coast. Doesn’t fit.

  ‘Lovely,’ she says.

  ‘Before you were married?’

  But the train jerks into life and she doesn’t answer and I can’t stop my mind wandering to Sonny’s stories about swimming in the Punakaiki river, climbing up the Taipo, fishing at the 12-Mile, biking to Hokitika, gold panning—

  What am I doing, why are we going there?

  I look at Gran and she’s looking straight back at me and I realise I’ve spoken it, I’ve said that groaning question aloud.

  And, wouldn’t you know it? Quite by accident, in an utterly haphazard, improbable, random way, it’s the very question to ask. And, as the train rushes into the Otira tunnel and the carriage lights go on and Duncan begins an interminable commentary about the tunnellers and the twenty-six-year construction and someone called the Very Reverend Curnow, Gran continues looking at me, mild surprise on her face.

  And answers my question.

  ‘Consolation,’ she says. ‘It’s my consolation. I told you that.’

  You did?

  ‘I deserve a consolation.’

  You did? Hold it, Gran. What are we talking about?

  I’m in such turmoil, thinking about Sonny, about him and me, about how near we’re getting to his territory, his haunts. This is a mess, I think — this idea was impulsive, stupid, the worst move.

  ‘No one knows,’ she says. ‘No one knows. What’s right? Don’t tell me what’s right. I asked God, and he sent me consolation. So I know it’s all right. My conscience is clear.’

  What?

  Funny how a family can have a wrenching emotional crisis and then scurry back to normality. During the day, anyway. I don’t know about the others, but for most of January my nights were filled with gruesome dreams of war, displacement, mutilation. The snowscapes of Bosnia were peopled by cartoon Nazis; I was always searching for Sonny but he was always elusive, maybe wounded, maybe dead, definitely out of sight.

  Please God, I muttered every night. Please keep him safe. Keep him safe and I’ll never be impatient with Gran or Dad again.

  But, to my disappointment, being patient with Dad was no easier. I’d expected that somehow reserves of tolerance and sensitivity would miraculously well up in me following the Christmas crisis. I’d thought that my fresh resolve to search out Dad’s origins and make him Happyeverafter would also make me sympathetic to his delicate emotional state; would enable a broad and mature view of our family history, our dynamics; would enable a saintly detachment and good humour when domestic life got trying.

  Fat chance.

  Normality meant that after lying round for a few days eating, reading our Christmas presents, watching videos, sunbathing, visiting friends and rellies, it was business-as-usual for Mum and Dad — that is, back to work, back to tennis, back to routine, back to Dad getting right up my nose without any effort at all.

  ‘Baaaarn-yah Luke-ah! Baaaarn-yah Luke-ah!’

  ‘No!’ It was only 8 a.m. on the fifth day of the new year.

  BANG BANG BANG BANG!

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Only two weeks to Veterans, Buttercup. Parminter’ll be in my group, for sure. And that bastard with the huge serve from New Plymouth, whatsisname? It’s keeping me awake at night. Haunting me!’

  BANG BANG BANG — ‘Yes, yes, yes! Bugger! Funny thing,’ he said, appearing in my doorway. ‘I can’t seem to do it without chanting the Bosnian Rap.’

  ‘Too bad. You should know better. It’s immoral! Call yourself a p
eace campaigner.’

  ‘CO, in fact.’

  ‘My conscience objects to that chant.’

  ‘I was in the infamous paintbomb-throwing incident in—’

  ‘Aaaaaaagh!’

  Everything changes, but, actually, it all stays the same.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Brenna. The wicked stepmother had given her an extra week on top of the statutory holidays and she spent it round at our place. ‘It was exactly like that when the parents split. Da was a shite, he really was, going on and on about Ruth, how he needed to remake himself or some shit, and then haggling with Ma over the money. And she was so sad. And I thought, Well, I’ll look after her now and be all loving and caring. But in no time at all she was pissing me right off and I just couldn’t keep it up.’

  Dear Sonny, I wrote on a Matisse postcard (‘L’Odalisque’: a fleshy concubine, readying herself for love), This is how Brenna and I look after all the Christmas pigging. We are lying round as much as we can — Gran barely notices Brenna. Since Xmas she’s been getting up during the night, getting dressed trying to get out the front door with her suitcases. Since my room’s near the door I’m the one who has to get her back to bed. ‘Oh, is that the time?’ she says, I didn’t realise. Silly old me.’

  So what do you think of the Family Secret? Dad’s still got to tell your folks. He’s upset about Johnny not being his cousin when they were always so close. It is weird. And they look so alike. But that must be auto-suggestion or something.

  I feel sad that you can’t call me little cuzzie any more.

  But you can call me your love, Charlie Mike. XXXXX

  ‘As you know,’ said Brenna, lighting up, ‘speculation and analysis are my strong suit.’

  ‘Do you have to fag?’ said Finn, batting away the smoke extravagantly. ‘Recent studies have shown—’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Recent studies have shown that side-smoke may be as harmful as—’

  We were lying in the sun on the verandah, in our togs, Finn in his Jake hat and shades. He was touchingly attached to this first and enduring symbol of the Family Secret. Or, Bastard Line. Or, Paternity Problem. We gave it a lot of different titles now, and they all had capitals.

  ‘As I was about to say,’ said Brenna, ‘isn’t it interesting that playing tennis obsessively’s been your Da’s response to this whole trauma?’

  ‘Interesting’s one way of describing it.’

  ‘Obvious, of course,’ she said, ‘it’s all about virility, asserting virility—’

  ‘So the racquet’s a phallic symbol?’

  ‘And then there’s the ball thing—’

  ‘Right — and it’s on a court—’

  ‘These things have significance,’ said Brenna.

  ‘Wrong!’ said Finn. ‘It’s because Pops played and it was about the only thing they had in common. Mum reckons. I asked her.’

  ‘Did you?’ I said, interested.

  I’d only talked to Mum once about it all. I was annoyed with her. Of course I was glad that she was around, sharing Dad’s angst, reassuring him, supporting him, as they say in counselling-speak. And I was, when I thought about it, relieved that at least one of the adults in our life was sane and steady. But, in the one conversation we’d had about Dad and the Bastard Line, she’d said outright she didn’t think there was much point trying to hunt down the lost father. Not in the tunnels and pits of Gran’s mind, anyway.

  ‘We tried that,’ she said. ‘Exhaustively. And it nearly drove Bob off the edge, he got so frustrated. Anyway, I don’t think it matters, finally. Pops is his real father. Who cares about the biology?’

  ‘Might not matter to you,’ I said.’ ‘Not your family tree. You know who your father and grandfather are.’

  ‘True,’ she said mildly. ‘It’s just that I don’t think you can actually find out, and the sooner we accept that the faster the healing can begin.’

  ‘Oh, healing,’ I said rudely.

  There was only one kind of healing possible, as far as I was concerned, and that was to crack the mystery. Put Dad’s mind at rest. Happyeverafter.

  The really annoying thing about Mum was, not only did she reject my big search-and-rescue gesture, she actually did manage the patient and tolerant number with Dad, in her usual saintly way; while I was back to finding him a pain in the arse.

  ‘Don’t be so nice,’ I said, when he bolted his dinner and raced down to the club to interface with Beryl and Mum just smiled goodbye; or when he spent all Saturday and most of Sunday preparing for the Veterans’ tournament and Mum managed Gran and had food waiting when Dad ducked back for a snack, dripping sweat and bonhomie, happy as a kid and about as useful.

  ‘Don’t be so patient,’ I said, when she just shrugged good-naturedly at the untouched extension plans still clipped to the easel while the draughtsman calculated the best ceiling-to-floor ratio in the house for a little night-time serving practice.

  ‘Can’t help it,’ she said. ‘I’m a Capricorn. We’re just like that.’

  Aries aren’t like that at all. We like action and progress. Arieans can’t be bothered with the everyday niceties; we prefer the broader sweep. And we have a low threshold for frustration.

  Still, I was interested in Mum’s theory about the tennis. ‘So what else did she say?’ I asked Finn.

  ‘You know — how Pops used to take Dad to tennis every Saturday, even though he didn’t live with Dad and Gran. How they went to Wilding Park to watch big games. How Joe used to come over for tournaments, with Johnny. It was the family thing. So, Mum reckons that’s why Dad got so into it again once he found out that Pops wasn’t his father. Sort of reconnecting.

  ‘Denial,’ said Brenna darkly. ‘Like, Ma still wears her wedding ring five years after Dad’s left. They need therapy.’

  ‘Mum thinks tennis is therapy for Dad.’

  At that point Gran came out with the suitcases and sat in her chair, scanning the street for the phantom taxi.

  ‘Dear,’ she said, looking hard at me. ‘I really don’t approve of that sort of clothing in mixed company.’

  ‘Can’t say I approve of hers,’ whispered Brenna. It was bad, all right: bad colour combinations, two aprons, odd shoes, the foul hat.

  ‘Dear,’ said Gran, gesticulating. ‘Modesty. There’s a taxi coming.’

  ‘Okay.’ I grabbed Brenna’s foot. You could actually ignore Gran and she didn’t notice. You could also discuss just about anything in front of her and, as long as you didn’t use familiar names, it went over her head. ‘Turn your brain to the question of how we get to the bottom of this knotty little paternity problem.’

  ‘Methodology,’ said Brenna, looking at Gran out of the corner of her eye, furtively lighting another cigarette. ‘But personally, since there’s no logic or science to the woman in question, I don’t see much point in actual method.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Finn.

  ‘Wouldn’t you be just as well off with a sort of random approach? You know, sort of firing from all directions.’

  ‘Firing what?’

  ‘Here’s our postie,’ said Gran, getting up. Poor old postie. It was a bad day for him when he had to stop the bike to push something bulky into the box instead of flying past without pause and flicking envelopes through the slit in his expert way. On a stopping day Gran usually got to him.

  Today was a flying-past day. Which might mean a postcard, I thought. I hadn’t had anything from Sonny since his melancholy Christmas Eve card, but I figured Christmas meant mail hold-ups. It had been quiet in Bosnia over Christmas: ceasefires to mark the festive season, a smattering of goodwill among ethnic groups. But things were back to normal now. I watched the news out of the corner of my eye: I saw the lines of harried, hungry refugees, the weeping wounded; I saw the Bosnian Serb leader, Karadzic, shaking his bullish head, denying war crimes; I saw armed peacekeepers, Western mediators, shattered, snow-caked, abandoned structures, unidentifiable now. I saw it all and I tried not to think of Sonny, close to the violence
, and the vengeance.

  ‘Firing stimuli. Can you fire stimuli I wonder?’ said Brenna. We watched Gran hobble down the path on unmatched heels.

  ‘What stimuli? That’s my point.’

  ‘Could you take her more places, maybe? Like you planned before?’

  ‘I’ve gone off that idea,’ said Finn, reaching over, plucking Brenna’s cigarette from her fingers and stubbing it out on the side of the verandah.

  ‘Why?’ I watched Gran to see if there was a postcard.

  ‘Well, when you think about it, there’s not really much point in going to all the places in her life — it’s too general. It’s the year before Dad’s birth that counts. But there’s no one to ask about it — Pops’s dead, Gran’s gaga, we don’t know who their friends were, relatives are all in the North Island—’

  ‘Here’s a thought,’ said Brenna. ‘What about radical exposure of mother to son. Have her with him as much as possible, trigger something.’

  ‘She’s already exposed.’

  ‘No, mega-exposure, like morning, noon and night. Apart from his work.’

  ‘Like have Gran down at the tennis court?’

  ‘She had all his childhood to be exposed—’

  ‘Why didn’t your Pops know about the year before your Da’s birth, anyway?’ said Brenna, her back to the path as she lit another cigarette. Gran was coming up the path.

  ‘Who says he didn’t know?’

  ‘Well, how come he couldn’t figure out who the real father was? How come he couldn’t figure out who your Gran was seeing?’

  ‘Probably at work. And she was just at home.’

  ‘C. T. Callaghan, Mr R. J. Callaghan, Mr Robert J. Cal laghan,’ read Gran, going through the mail.

  ‘Wait for it,’ said Finn.

  ‘I have a son called Robert Callaghan,’ said Gran.

  ‘That it?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, he was my only child,’ she said.

  ‘Do us a favour then,’ whispered Brenna, ‘and tell us who his father was.’

  ‘Give me one of those,’ I said, taking her cigarette packet.