by Duff, Alan
‘Must’ve been if I saw the difference right away.’ But there was no sexual hunger in her tone. ‘So, you’ll apply for, what, a chef’s position? Or start off as, I don’t know, a pot washer?’
‘That’s not sarcasm, is it? After fifteen minutes together?’ Could hear his anger threatening to take over, everything spinning out of control.
‘No,’ she said. ‘But don’t kid yourself there’s none coming, Johno Ryan. At least some harsh home truths.’
‘Sure.’ So why did he swallow? ‘But you wanna start right now?’
‘I will if you take that attitude. Why don’t we wind the clock back and you ask how the kids and I have got on?’
‘I was getting to that. Come on, hon.’ He reached for her hand on the steering wheel. Saw how veiny it was, felt cool to the touch. ‘I know from the old lags the first day is stressful for everyone. Promise I’ll try to make it as easy as I can. For the kids, too.’
‘Leah’s at school — that’s why I was late. Danny starts school soon. They’ll stay a few days with my parents while you and I get sorted.’
He made the mistake of reading that as a sexual signal. But when he ran a hand along her leg he felt her stiffen.
She said, ‘I’ll need my own time to adjust to that. Sorry.’
Taken aback, he managed to say, ‘That’s okay. I understand. I’d worry more if you were already adjusted.’
‘If some of your so-called friends had their way, I would be,’ she said.
Felt like he’d been punched.
‘Like who?’
‘You taught me never to name names.’
‘So now I’m unteaching you,’ Johno said. ‘Who?’
‘People you’d expect better of,’ she said. ‘Call around and give me the questions on how we’re doing and can they help. I read it wrong the first couple of times and said, “You’re a godsend. Johno’s car needs repairs. Jags are expensive to fix. The washing machine has broken down — all those nappies’cause I can’t afford disposables.” Till I saw that look a man gets when he wants you know what.’
‘You talking mates of mine?’ Really, apart from Shane they’d all been acquaintances who shouldn’t even know where his wife lived.
‘Johno?’ She turned to face him. ‘Please know that some are far from your mates and that I stayed faithful to you. I threatened to call your old man if they didn’t piss off. Okay?’
‘You know what? That was the last thing on my mind. If you’ve slept with someone, that’s all right. You’re human. If there were women in prison I wouldn’t have been faithful.’
‘You weren’t when you were free,’ she said. ‘The second-to-last night before you went away, you didn’t come home.’
‘Come on. Don’t be bringing that up after all this time. Ask me if I’ve changed, why don’t you?’ He said it with what he thought was a genuine smile. But inside he was churning.
‘Believe it when I see it.’
‘Believe it now and give me the benefit of your considerable doubt.’ Sounded like Kanohi, a bit flowery, because he was all wound up now.
The traffic was mind-blowing to a man used only to human traffic, chaotic and shrill and violent though it had been. Johno kept pushing his feet to the floor, feeling Evelyn should have braked sooner. Wanted to take over the driving.
‘So tell me how it’s been for you,’ he said to the windscreen.
‘Not a joy ride,’ she said. ‘But plenty of time to unload all that. Glad you asked. You want a smoke?’ She handed him one sticking out of the packet, lit her own and he lit off hers. The gesture felt familiar, intimate, like it should be.
‘You on roll-ups in there?’ she said. ‘What I heard.’
‘You heard right. But working in the kitchen gave me food to swap for tailor-mades. Plus, I play a mean game of poker.’ To which Evelyn just sighed. Beyond the windscreen, free life looked slightly less beautiful, and every tiled roof felt like an unlikely promise that he and his family would have a home of their own, too.
‘That’ll be useful.’ Evelyn’s sarcasm twisted his knotted gut more. ‘From the professional criminal to the pro poker player. How long do you think that will last?’
‘They don’t throw you in jail for playing poker for money,’ he said defensively. Yet aware his desire to go straight was vague, that he had no actual plan, other than to get his first legitimate job and get into some sort of business, even if he had no idea what. How to go about the first part, someone who’d never held down a job in his life, not even a paper run as a boy?
The five hundred dollars he had won on the horse he’d tripled by playing poker. Add the thousand dollars cash he ‘checked in’ with, a few bucks of meagre prison earnings and his net cash worth was $2576.
‘What’s it like living out in Penrith?’ he said. ‘Be like the outback, wouldn’t it?’
‘Is that why I got hardly a letter from you? They got sent to the outback?’
‘Just saying Penrith is a long way from the action.’ He blew air.
‘Plenty of jobs going there. It’s a growing place. New houses going up all over. You hardly ever wrote,’ she said.
He looked to see if she was on his case again.
‘I’m no letter writer. What would I say?’
‘I dunno.’ She shrugged but the gesture said volumes.
‘You know I missed you,’ he said. ‘And the kids.’
‘I got over missing you. Too focused on staying alive, raising two kids. And I’m afraid your children have no memory of you.’
‘I didn’t expect they would. Why don’t you stop at the first shop that sells toys and I’ll get them something?’
‘Sure,’ she said, ‘but bribery won’t work. Leah loves to read and Danny’s idea of toys is pencils, paints, paper to draw on. He’s a proper little artist.’
‘I remember you wrote saying he loves drawing. Is he good?’
‘Better than. You’ll see. He turns five in March.’
‘March. That’s right.’ One little white lie was better than admitting he didn’t remember the date. ‘So that makes Leah …’
‘Nearly seven. She says she remembers you, but she’s not sure.’
‘Haven’t they got photos of me?’
‘You weren’t one for being photographed, Johno.’
‘So I’m even more of a stranger?’
‘I did warn you.’
‘What’s Leah good at?’
‘Talking, as in demanding till she gets her own way. Loves reading. Probably envies her brother’s arty bent.’
‘Can’t wait to see them,’ Johno said. Another white lie.
‘Don’t have any expectations. Okay?’ She seemed to have read his mind.
He didn’t know what to say. Right up to seeing her standing outside the car he’d had words, promises to make. Had intended telling her that he loved her and that he wasn’t the same person anymore.
‘I know how it goes,’ he said eventually.
‘Not sure you do,’ she sighed yet again. ‘But the world keeps turning.’
Silence again. He was finding Evelyn’s driving too aggressive in the heavy traffic. And he was horny, sitting beside a woman who plainly wasn’t.
This was a side of town he wasn’t familiar with, though he and Shane had done a van theft at an airport warehouse, stacked full of computers which they sold at one third the retail. He thought of his mate. What about when Shane got out and turned up? Didn’t bear thinking about, telling his closest friend he was going straight.
Hardly registered the suburb where she found a parking place in the main street, and no sooner was he in the toy store with her than he wanted out. So he waited in the car while Evelyn chose presents for their kids, trying not to brood or let the confusion take over. Heard on the car radio that today, of all days, was the Melbourne Cup. Of course, the first Tuesday of November every year. Great — something to take his mind off things.
He could leverage his cash, less the hundred he gave Evelyn for the ki
ds’ presents. Take out four hundred for a big grocery shop with lots of treats; Evelyn could indulge in stuff she’d had to walk past before. That left two fucking sweet grand to put on two — no, spread it over four — horses, four hundred to win, a hundred a place to at least get some, if not most, of his dough back. But really, he couldn’t miss. And if a longer shot came home? Another voice, his father’s, said gambling is a mug’s game. But what the hell, sometimes even a mug must back a winner.
Evelyn would be a while yet. In no time he found a TAB.
At his request she took the long way through the city that used to be his playground, though he didn’t direct her right into the heart of his old haunts. What was the point? Out at Penrith in the west a road sign said it wasn’t much further to the Blue Mountains, which were looming purple in the near distance. But Penrith was too new and way too suburban, bland, not his scene at all.
They went up rickety wooden steps that creaked to a cheaply constructed stucco building housing a few flats. He could hear a kid bawling downstairs and the mother shouting at it, spotted the familiar figures of the idle unemployed. First thing he’d do with the winnings was find a better flat, in a better area. Put a hand in his pocket to touch the TAB tickets. Come in, spinner. What his old man used to say when, as bookmaker, he didn’t want a heavily backed horse to win.
Johno held back his shock at the tininess of the place, how it was on the wrong side for the sun. He’d left his family in a big city apartment with the rent paid up two months ahead and ten grand in cash. Now they were in this dump?
‘Home sweet home,’ she said, and he’d never seen such a thin smile.
‘We’ll soon have that changed. Man, it’s good to be out.’ He was aware of the nervous sexual energy in his body. That damn sigh, and it went on seconds too long.
He said, ‘Take your time. I’m not coming on with a rush.’ Not what his body was telling him.
‘It’s okay.’ But her tear-filled eyes said it wasn’t. ‘Just have to get used to it — to you — again.’
She sounded like she was seventy years old and weary of life.
‘Evelyn …?’ God, couldn’t she hear how plaintive he was? ‘I meant it. I’m finished with crime. And when you think about it, it wasn’t the longest criminal career.’
‘No, it wasn’t. The kids and I lasted longer out here,’ said Evelyn. She’d definitely hardened. ‘I’ll believe what my eyes see, not what your mouth promises. You want to go to bed?’
‘Not if you don’t. No.’
‘Can you give me time?’
‘Like I said.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You don’t have to say that,’ he said. ‘I should be on my knees begging forgiveness for putting you and our kids in a place like this. Jesus Christ, but this isn’t what I’d imagined it would be like.’
‘Nothing ever is,’ she said. ‘You want coffee? I don’t have any alcohol in the place, sorry.’
‘Stop saying sorry. I’ll get some later. Too early, at any rate. Why don’t we go for a walk? You can show me around.’
‘I’d do it for you,’ she said.
‘Do what?’ Before he got it. Felt like collapsing in a heap on the worn carpet. Wished he was back in jail and restarting this homecoming.
‘No. No,’ he said again. ‘Only when you’re ready.’
‘Johno …? I don’t think I’ll ever be ready,’ she said. His lifted hand precluded another sorry.
‘Look, I do understand.’ Even if he was hurt and confused. ‘I do get it. Okay?’
By the time he finished his little spiel on how determined he was to go straight and how he’d realised what a prick he was, she was weeping in his arms and he was tearful too.
‘But we can work this through,’ he said, ‘for the kids’ sake. And for us.’
This was a more mature man speaking. Except that he’d wagered money on a horse race that he intended to slip away and watch in some pub. Come home either a hero or zero.
‘Since you spilled your guts I’ll have a turn,’ she said. And proceeded to tell him of the financial and emotional struggle, of bouts of misery so bad she thought she’d developed depression, of how super-sensitive and distant Danny could be — how he might sit up drawing till two in the morning and how she stayed awake, afraid he might go wandering. Told of his timid nature, his deathly fear of spiders and cockroaches — ‘plenty of those here. Comes of his vivid imagination. He’s a creative kid who dreams on a grand scale like you wouldn’t believe.’ Kept going back to how low her moods got, that she’d even had thoughts of taking her own life — ‘if it wasn’t for the kids’.
He could have died of shame. And it was worse because, as they sat there, he realised that she didn’t love him and he wasn’t sure he loved her.
Chapter six
In this Penrith suburban pub, jammed to the rafters with Melbourne Cup fans, the beer had gone straight to his head, but he did feel a lot better. At one stage two of his horses were running first and third. The excitement — and not a little fear — was unbearable. He felt alone and completely irrelevant, like he’d arrived in the middle of a game and didn’t know the rules. Or at a party he wasn’t invited to.
He still had first place right up to about a hundred metres. Then the lead changed and the confusion returned. He no longer saw the screen, no matter which one he looked at.
Next he heard the TV commentator say that Mahogany, owned by Australia’s richest man, Kerry Packer, had won. How could that be? Where were Johno’s four horses? Surely he was at least in the placings?
He just wanted to die again.
In between the unfamiliar indignity of being interviewed for low-paid jobs and not following up when told his application was successful, the relationship was clearly over: he and Evelyn argued every day. A man not inclined to being drawn into heated discussion, as it achieved nothing that he could see, he’d had more arguments in seven weeks than in his entire thirty-nine-month prison sentence. The single sex act had brought back old memories of sleeping with a hooker: degrading for both parties but at least one of them got paid. The kids didn’t like him — naturally enough, they saw him as an unwanted intruder in their lives.
For all his best intentions it seemed more and more that his fate was fixed, that he would follow in the Ryan male tradition and make his living unlawfully since he couldn’t get himself to accept a lowly job.
Then Evelyn made a shock announcement. She was leaving.
Now he was on the sofa bed, early on Boxing Day morning, as Evelyn and Leah bustled around before their departure. Johno too shattered even to say goodbye to his daughter, too gutless to wish his wife well, too stunned to ask how on earth he was expected to cope with Danny, his whole life turned upside down not yet two months out of prison.
Listening to the thumps and creaks of the two descending the stairs, Leah’s questioning voice and her mother hushing her. Dawn light was just coming through the window with its close view of the neighbour’s roof. Little traffic noise because the country was on holiday. He didn’t know how Evelyn had explained things to Danny, still sleeping.
Not long afterwards the kid came out of his bedroom and even in his befuddled state nothing could take away from the good looks inherited from his mother — the dark hair, the molten brown eyes, the olive complexion. And how could a boy not quite five years old have such a sultry mouth?
‘Where’s Leah gone?’
His sister slept in the same room. Johno didn’t know what to say, just watched as Danny went to his mother’s door, opened it. ‘Where have they gone?’
‘She and Mum have gone out for awhile.’
‘Where? Why have they gone without me?’ Next Danny was sobbing, calling for his missing mother and sister.
‘Come on, let’s go to the dairy.’ He’d run out of cigarettes. ‘I’ll buy you something — whatever you want. How’s that?’ Still couldn’t call him Danny.
‘Noooo! I want my mummy! I want Leah!’
Des
perate for a smoke, Johno said, ‘Any sweets you want. Ice cream … Take your pick, kid.’ And when Danny only wailed Johno said, ‘If the big shops were open I’d take you to buy some new paints and brushes. Day after tomorrow they open again and you and I are going shopping.’ But the kid wasn’t listening.
For Christmas yesterday Danny had handed his father a book on thoroughbred horses, bought by Evelyn, who should have known he didn’t like race horses that much. Betting on them was a different matter. Leah at least made something of a fuss with her present of a pair of socks. Johno had gone to the trouble of finding a store that specialised in artwork tools and supplies and got Danny good-quality drawing paper, and a set of the finest pens. The kid was big on detail in his drawings. Leah’s various presents, girl stuff, were bought by her mother with Johno’s name attached. That was yesterday, adults acting out a happy family Christmas Day, at the end of which Evelyn dropped her bombshell.
‘I’m on anti-depressants,’ she informed him. ‘But we can’t get the balance right. I feel I’m going to implode, and you not taking up any of the job offers doesn’t help. So I’ve made a decision, heart-breaking though it is.’
‘Where have they gone? Do you know where? Leah’s stuff has gone.’
‘They had to go away for a little while—’ Johno got no more out, as the kid screamed even louder.
‘I’ll take you on a big Ferris wheel day after tomorrow when everything opens up again. How about a trip to the zoo? You could take your drawing things and make pictures of the animals. A lion. Draw a giraffe. But today, sorry, all the shops are closed except the dairy.’
Another deafening scream, his little chest heaving, the front of his pyjama top wet with tears and snot. ‘Why have they gone? When are they coming back? Why did they leave me?’
‘Danny?’
‘Go away! I want my mummy and sister back. You go away. Go away. Go away!’
The neighbours must be wondering what all the fuss was. The kid hadn’t let up for a good hour. If he didn’t have a cigarette soon … Johno felt like his mind was exploding.
He said, ‘I’m popping out to get some smokes. Be back in no time.’