He came at me low, and I spun.
I knew that this thrust would miss, but I also knew that he would keep coming at me until I stopped him coming at me. So I spun, and I tightened my grip on the knife.
But when he was almost on me, there was a sound: the report of a gun.
The knife dropped from his hand, and he dropped to the ground, fingers latticed over his heart.
I turned around – Dad had a gun in his hand, and the air now had a sour metallic smell.
As I rushed over to the intruder, I took out my phone, about to dial triple-O.
‘Don’t call anybody,’ said Dad. ‘He’s gone.’
I looked at the masked figure crumpled on the floor and immediately I knew Dad was right: he was gone.
Dad’s eyes were moving around the room, taking it all in. Once again I had that feeling I’d had a few times lately, the feeling that my dad was not who I thought he was, that he was capable of stuff I couldn’t imagine – I mean, he’d just killed somebody, his arm was bleeding, but he was taking it all so calmly.
‘We’ll sort this out,’ he said, ripping off a strip of the sheet with his teeth and tying it around the wound on his arm. ‘I just need a few stitches, that’s all.’
‘But –’ I said.
‘David?’ said Mom, wiping the blood from her face with the corner of the sheet.
Dad opened the drawer of his bedside table, reached in, and brought out a phone – a Styxx – I’d never seen before. He started composing a text.
‘Trust me,’ he said when he’d finished, ‘it’s better we do this my way.’
Dad moved over to the body, knelt down and ripped the balaclava off.
Both eyes were open. And one was lazy.
Droopy Eye.
He was my age. He was dead. Killed by my own father. The emotions: horror, anguish, fear, whatever, were too much, they had to get out – I screamed, a torrent of pure noise from my guts, throat, mouth.
‘Now, you need to get a hold,’ said Dad.
He was right: I needed to get a hold. I took a couple of slow deep breaths and it seemed to work. Then I noticed what the contraption on Droopy Eye’s head was: a Go Pro video camera.
And suddenly it all made sense: I was never the target; it was always my father, the one who had killed his father. Occhio per occhio, dente per dente. He was going to revenge that death and the camera was to show everybody back in San Luca how he, the hero, had done it.
I grabbed the Go Pro, ripped it off his head.
‘You need to get rid of that,’ said Dad.
‘I will,’ I said, turning the camera around so it was pointing at me, filming me.
Dad opened his mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again – could he possibly know what I was doing?
I pointed the camera at Droopy Eye, at his lifeless body, before turning it off and putting it into my pocket. And another feeling swept me up, one of utter revulsion: what had I become? Who in the hell was I?
But then there was a knock on the door, and Miranda’s frightened voice came from the other side. ‘Is everything okay in there? What was that screaming?’
And then Toby: ‘What’s going on?’
And then the sound of a vehicle pulling up in front of our house; whoever Dad had texted had taken no time to get here.
I almost forgot. ‘Samsoni,’ I said. ‘They knocked him out.’
‘Don’t you worry, son,’ said Dad. ‘It will all be sorted.’ He turned to Mom. ‘You take the kids over to Dad’s house, and don’t come out until I tell you.’ The authority in his voice was unmistakeable, and reassuring; somebody was taking control, somebody was going to fix it.
Mom opened the door, shepherding my siblings down the corridor. I was just about to leave too, when Dad grabbed me by the arm.
‘He would’ve killed me,’ he said.
I nodded.
‘And you saved my life.’
Again, all I could do was nod.
‘Don’t you ever forget that,’ he said. ‘It was his life or mine.’
He kissed me on the cheek, Italian-style. Something he had never done before. ‘Go join the others.’
I ran down the stairs and caught up with them as they were crossing the lawn.
‘What happened in there?’ said Toby.
‘What happened in there?’ said Miranda.
‘We had an intruder,’ said Mom. ‘And your dad was attacked, but the main thing is that he’s okay and the police are sorting it out.’
‘What police?’ said Toby. ‘They don’t look like police to me.’
‘Plainclothes,’ said Mom. ‘It’s Halcyon Grove, nobody wants to create a big fuss.’
I’m not really sure if my siblings bought this or not, especially not Miranda, but they didn’t ask many other questions. I suppose Mom was right – the main thing was that Dad was okay, that we were okay.
Gus stomped around making us Milo, and found some biscuits somewhere – so much for ‘sugar is going to kill you’.
‘Okay,’ said Mom. ‘Let’s get to bed.’
As if that was ever going to happen; we were all wired to the max. So instead we sat around and talked total crap and when we got sick of that we watched crap TV like it was some sort of normal family get-together.
Dad turned up about an hour later, to tell us that Samsoni was fine and it had all been ‘sorted’ and we could all go back to our bedrooms. Toby and Miranda had questions, but Dad had that amazing politician’s knack of seeming to supply adequate answers while saying pretty much nothing.
Toby and Miranda got out of their chairs to leave, but I stayed where I was. Dad looked at me, and I noticed now that he had a professional-looking bandage on his arm.
‘Dom, I think it’s time you came home,’ he said.
Mom said nothing, but she didn’t need to, it was on her face – time to come home, Dom. I knew both my parents were connected to The Debt – they had to be. But they were my parents, and tonight I couldn’t argue with them: it was time to come home.
We all walked back to the house together, the five of us in a tight bunch. As for the house, it looked like nothing had ever happened. I wondered what they’d done with Francesco Strangio; now that he was dead I couldn’t call him that other thing.
We sat in the lounge and talked some more and then Toby excused himself and went to bed and Miranda excused herself and went to bed and then it was three-thirty in the morning and it was just the three of us.
‘Well, I guess I better hit the sack,’ said Dad.
I couldn’t believe it: he’d killed somebody, and he was going to pop off to bed. What sort of person can do that? Go through what we’d just been through, and then crawl between the sheets, and sleep like a baby?
‘Don’t you think you owe me some sort of explanation?’ I said.
Dad and Mom exchanged looks.
‘Yes, of course we do,’ said Dad. ‘We need to tell you absolutely everything, but now’s not the right time.’
‘I know you went to San Luca,’ I said, looking at him hard.
I switched my attention to Mom. ‘And I know you’re not American.’
Mom look outraged. ‘Of course –’ she started, but I didn’t let her get any further than that.
‘I know!’ I said.
Mom and Dad looked at each other and did some of that wordless communication that parental units do.
And Dad spoke …
SATURDAY
SAN LUCA
‘When I was sixteen, I had to get away from Gus. Rocco’s family took me in,’ said Dad.
‘You lived with the Tavernitis?’
Dad nodded.
My head was spinning: the Tavernitis were The Debt, they had to be, and Dad had lived with them? The same people who had just put him through hell, who had threatened to remove a pound of his flesh, and he moved in with them?
I knew he was connected, but this connected?
‘But –’ I started, before Mom leant over and put her s
oft hand on my forearm. ‘Just let your dad have his say.’
‘Rocco and I were mates,’ he said. ‘We had been ever since we went to Miami State High together. Us wogs, we had to stick together in those days. So when I left school I worked at the restaurant, as a dish pig.’ He smiled at this, as if the idea of him with his arms elbow-deep in dish suds didn’t quite seem possible. ‘You want to learn about hard work, there’s nothing like a kitchen.’
I thought about Dad’s offices, the empty desks, the cobwebs – it didn’t look like there was much hard work going on there.
‘Then, when we were twenty-one, we were sent to Italy,’ he said.
Small sentence, big statement: my dad had always maintained that he’d never visited the land of his ancestors.
He must’ve pegged the look on my face, because he held up both hands and said, ‘Yes, I know. Big lie. But please let me continue. Rocco and I were sent to San Luca to learn the family business.’
I’m not sure if my parents knew that I’d been to San Luca also; if they did, it wasn’t me who had told them. ‘The family business?’ I said.
‘Restaurants, cafés,’ he said.
’Ndrangheta, I thought, because what he said didn’t make sense – he was already working in a restaurant.
‘Economically, Italy wasn’t the place it is today, especially in a small village in the Aspromonte Mountains, but for a couple of canguros like us, it wasn’t such a bad life.’ Dad paused, and I could see the glow of pleasure in his face; he was obviously telling the truth. ‘And then your mother arrived in town.’
Mom and Dad smiled at each other.
‘Arrived?’
‘Yes, she’d been living in the States. Your mother was born in California, but things didn’t work out, so her family came back to the old village.’
So Mom was a hundred per cent American, a hundred per cent Californian! I felt a great surge of relief – at least she was who she said she was.
‘I guess you could say it was love at first sight,’ said Dad, smiling at Mom again, this time upping the wattage.
‘Where did you meet?’ I asked.
‘In the piazza, next to the fountain,’ said Mom.
I was just about to say, I know that piazza, I know that fountain, but I bit my tongue – knowledge is currency, even with your own family.
‘But we had a problem,’ said Dad. ‘And here in the Gold Coast in this day and age it might be a bit hard to understand this, but remember, this was Italy many years ago, and a very traditional part of the country. My adopted family and your mother’s family, well, they didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye.’
‘The Tavernitis?’ I said. Dad nodded. ‘And the …?’ I had a mental block – what was Mom’s maiden name, again. I was sure I knew it, but I just couldn’t find it.
‘Baresi,’ said Mom. ‘My maiden name is Baresi.’
Before I could process that, Dad had taken up the thread again.
‘There was no real issue with the Baresis; they’re civilised people.’
I was losing track here, genealogy had never been my strong point, but then it came to me. ‘So it was with Mom’s mother’s family?’
‘You got it,’ said Dad.
‘My mother was a Strangio,’ said Mom.
Though I’d been stabbed, kicked in the knurries, whacked across the ear, I’d never been punched in the face, but this is what this was: no fist, no knuckles, but bam! I even rocked back on my heels.
My dad had killed a Strangio.
He was married to a Strangio.
He had killed family!
‘Dom, are you okay?’ said Dad. ‘You’re looking sort of white.’
‘The boy who died, he was your family!’ I said to Mom.
‘They disowned me, I disowned them,’ she said, her voice as hard as flint.
Now the information cat was out of the information bag, but neither of my parents showed surprise that I knew this.
‘And he wanted to kill my husband,’ said Mom. And she had a point: Francesco had come to our house for one reason and one reason only.
Dad continued. ‘I wasn’t allowed to see your mother, wasn’t allowed to contact her, so to cut a long story short, we ran away to Australia.’
I looked at my dad and my mum, the Romeo and Juliet of San Luca, and I thought: Do you think you’ve raised your son to be a complete idiot? Do you think I’m going to stop believing the story you’ve always told, how you met in Tavernitis, and start believing that crap?
‘And this guy was going to kill you for that?’ I said. ‘All these years after it happened?’
‘Like I said, son. You have to remember how backward these places are.’
Backward, but not that backward – this was the second Strangio my father had killed.
And that was on the tip of my tongue, but a voice told me that now wasn’t the time, or the place, to have this out. Or give voice to the umpteen other questions that were now accumulating in my head.
I said goodnight to my parents, went upstairs to my room, and plugged the Go Pro into my laptop.
Download video file to hard disk? the software asked me.
I hit enter, and hit it hard.
SATURDAY
BRANDON
The trip to the hospital later that day was much more orthodox: I asked my grandfather if he could drive me there. No headlamps, no gloves, no scurrying along tunnels like a yellow-toothed sewer rat.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Why not, there’s somebody there I wouldn’t mind visiting, either.’
As we got into his ute, I checked the text I’d received from PJ.
meet me at hosp urgent
Of course, I’d thought about not going.
I’d thought about running away.
I’d thought about moving to another country, making a new life for myself.
I’d thought about a lot of stuff, but I knew that I had to go to the hospital and face PJ.
It was raining, one of those light drizzles that is not as light or drizzly as you think. Gus doesn’t mind an umbrella, so when we got out of the car after he had found – much excitement! – a free park that was close to the hospital, he held it over the both of us.
When we got inside I couldn’t help looking at the CCTV cameras. This time I would be both seen and remembered. Stored on the hard disk. We got into a lift, Gus bound for the second floor, me for the fourth.
Gus got out. We’d already agreed to meet in the café when we’d both done what we had to do. I continued on. The lift opened on the third floor, and who gets in but Funky Orderly?
He took one look at me, took out his phone, and said in a loud, mannered voice, ‘Yes, I know you’re not really there but who cares, I just like to have imaginary conversations with imaginary people.’
I shook my head: some people, some orderlies.
I got out on the fourth floor, past those other two CCTV cameras, past the ward desk. When I knocked on Brandon’s door there were two replies of, ‘Come in.’
I entered. PJ was sitting in one of the chairs, her mother in the other; they were holding hands.
And Brandon was awake!
Now I understood why PJ had sent the text.
‘Grammar,’ he said. Though his voice was just a croak, it seemed a miracle that he could talk. He had come so close to dying, so close to being killed.
‘No more,’ I said. ‘I’ve left school.’
‘You’re still a Grammar boy,’ he said. ‘That stink lasts forever.’
‘Brandon, please,’ said his mother. ‘Tristan’s our visitor.’
‘Tristan?’ said PJ, looking at her mother and then at me.
‘Yes, we met here last night.’
‘You came last night?’ said PJ, and I couldn’t blame her for being perplexed. ‘What for?’
To take a life, to kill your brother.
But I couldn’t go through with it.
Just like Gus couldn’t go through with it.
We sat there for a while longer,
but it was about as awkward as awkward can get. Brandon may have snapped out of his coma, but he still had an incurable disease. And PJ, the girl I had recently kissed, seemed like the strangest of strangers.
I stood up. ‘I have to meet my grandfather.’
‘Thanks for coming,’ said Pat.
‘I’ll text you,’ said PJ.
I looked over at Brandon. His eyes caught mine and there was something in them I’d never seen, or never noticed, before: he was scared, he was terrified. I moved over to his bed.
‘You’re not going to hug me or anything?’ he said.
‘I was thinking about it.’
‘Yeah, well, if you have to. Let’s get it over and done with.’
I leant over and hugged him as best as I could, and as I did his hand gripped my arm and gripped it tight and he whispered, ‘You make sure my sister is okay.’
‘I will,’ I said, though PJ didn’t strike me as the sort of person who needed looking after. I stood up, and as I walked out I wondered if this would be the last time I ever saw Brandon alive.
Ω Ω Ω
As Gus approached Chevron Heights I asked him if he would mind taking a slight detour – I had something to deliver.
‘Of course not,’ he said.
I directed him to stop outside an ordinary suburban house in an ordinary suburban street. A van, Komang Pool Cleaners written on the side, was in the drive.
As I took the package from my pocket I wondered about the contents, the DVD that was inside.
I’d edited and re-edited it.
I’d watched it over and over again.
Sometimes I thought it was a masterpiece: incontrovertible proof that I’d done what they’d asked. And other times I thought it was just a pile of rubbish.
But it was in the papers, all over the internet:
Italian Exchange Student Goes Missing on Gold Coast
And surely that was going to help my cause.
I got out of the ute, walked up to the front gate.
Just as I was about to slot the package into the letterbox something really obvious occurred to me: I hadn’t killed Francesco Strangio, but I had killed Francesco Strangio.
If I gave them the DVD, they would have that over me for the rest of my life. The same way they had Bag Lady over my dad.
Take a Life Page 22