“C’mon, Dad, surely you can see your story’s full of holes.”
“All these things you’re saying, they do not represent holes in my story. Don’t dismiss my very solid argument as just some ‘story’, son. It’s not just a story, it’s true information.”
“Well, where the hell did you get this information?”
“I was given that information, Dylan – I’ve seen that information around. I have very good gut feelings about these kinds of things.”
I tell him his guts must be from Krypton or something if his gut feeling beats down my actual factual evidence.
Dad says that, actually, I’m the one ignoring his evidence.
We long out this back-and-forth for a few more minutes. Everything I say just reinforcing his already made-up mind. Ain’t even sure we can meet each other halfway here. Halfway along what way? He won’t even see my set of facts and I sure as fuck don’t recognise anything factual in his bullshit. Then finally it daybreaks on me: I don’t actually even need to prove my facts – not if my feelings are as equally valid as facts. Cos I can’t have been fucking up his relationship with Naliah’s mum outta spite if I don’t actually feel any spite. And I don’t – don’t even feel upset by it. Actualtruth, it’s more like the opposite.
Exhibit A: First time your mum asked you how you felt about her and your dad splitting up, you told her you just wanted them both to be happy. Told her you were worried they’d both be really unhappy if they divorced and really unhappy if they didn’t. Back then it just sounded like something you should say – just some stock-standard Australian soap opera crap. Weren’t till a year or so later that you realised just how much you actually meant it.
Exhibit B: Ain’t even know what Naliah’s mum even looks like, but I can already picture her smiling. Daddy smiling back. Plus picnics and barbecues and dinner parties. Do parents actually have dinner parties, or is that just something you see on TV? (BTW, for the purposes of picturing all this, I’m just assuming Naliah’s mum is the spitting image of her daughter.) Next thing I know, there’s some party time going on up in my head. We’re talking canapés and party poppers. Cartwheels and pom-pom routines. I tell Dad let’s forget Maccy D’s and milkshakes – we should be hitting Carluccio’s or something, get us some lobster lasagne and Dom Perignon. Balloons, even. Presents. A Congratulations On Your Actual Relationship card. What I don’t tell him is that inside this card (which is blank for your own message), I’d elaborate:
“Dear Daddy, congrats on not being the useless lonely loser that everyone thinks you are – nor the pathetic, pizza-eating porn-addict that I was starting to think you were. Love, Dhilan.”
As if he can read this card on my forehead, Dad scrunches up his own. “Please stop being sarcastic, Dylan. It’s only been just over a year. My relationship with Naliah’s mother is still tentative – and thanks to your silly sob stories, it’s now becoming tenuous.” His hand starts doing this opening and closing thing, like maybe he’s got repetitive strain injury. Then, half open, he slams down on the plastic table. “I mean, what the bloody fuck is your problem, Dylan? You know, when Naliah first threatened to come looking for you, I was actually very relaxed. After all, what did I have to hide in that regard? A son who stopped phoning me when he turned ten and didn’t want to know me.”
“Wait, but, Dad, that isn’t—”
“That isn’t the point?”
“No, I mean it isn’t even—”
“You’re right, Dylan, it isn’t worth retreading. And I wouldn’t have had to if you hadn’t told her all that whining woe-is-me bullshit. I’m supposed to be moving in with her, son – I’ve got everything packed away in cardboard boxes and crates. She already has my coffee table and my favourite rug. But now suddenly she wants to tread carefully because she thinks I’m some shyster who abandoned his son.”
Should probly go get him a cup of Maccy D’s tea – help him swallow his beef with me. Or maybe that’d be dickless when he’s sitting there with some thermos flask poking out his coat pocket.
“I thought things were going well between us, son. You even agreed to meet with me that first afternoon in McDonald’s. And so not only do I finally get to have a proper life companion in Naliah’s mother, I also finally get my longed-for relationship with my son.”
The look that scrolls up on Dad’s face is the exact same look he’d rock during the first few months after the divorce. Like he’d slipped over in public and wanted everyone to know it weren’t his fault. Floor was wet. There was an uneven step. It was like there’d be a fight on his face between embarrassment and anger and he’d be putting all his muscle into backing anger. Why’s this fucking floor wet? Stupid fucking uneven step. Right now, the fights on his face are minor compared with the even bigger fights in his body. Juddering knee, closing fist, opening fist, diaphragm doing self-CPR. Can’t even steady his hands to stop his thermos flask slipping out his raincoat. I catch it and stand it on the table – where it carries on wobbling a few secs as if his shakes are contagious.
Daddy doesn’t even notice my catching skills.
“I don’t know why Naliah seems to have it in for me, Dylan. I try – I really try. But then she tells me I’m being creepy and too nice. So then I try to keep my distance and she tells her mum I’m full of secrets and hiding things. She just refuses to trust a single word that comes out of my mouth.”
“No shit, Dad.”
Next, I’m telling him that if I’d been in his shoes, I’d have probly told Naliah and her mum the exact same thing. I tell him I’ll help him to clean up his mess – help him keep his Trusted Seller status. “For instance, Dad, if you like, I can help you strategise. Show you how to keep all your stories vague so Naliah and her mum can’t catch you on the details. Also, you can use mnemonics to keep track of what you have and haven’t told her. Key thing is don’t put all your bullshit in one basket.”
“What?”
“Or I could just say to Naliah that I only told her all that stuff cos I was trying to impress her or something – some pulled-myself-up-by-my-own-bootstraps bullshit. Seriously, Dad, I can patch this for you. I mean, so you been lying to Naliah’s mum cos you’re afraid of losing her. So what? I guess that’s just what men do, right? Doesn’t matter who gets hurt so long as you don’t feel the pain of being dumped or rejected. So I’m totally down with lying for you.”
He smacks the table again. “I’m not asking you to lie to her, Dylan, I’m asking you tell her the truth. It’s bad enough the way you’ve apparently been lying to Ramona about your mother all these years. Do you realise how badly that reflects on me? Naliah keeps saying, ‘Like son, like father …’ ”
Okay, fuck being respectful.
Fuck being non-confrontational.
“They’re not bloody lies, you silly man!” The other McDonald’s diners start eaveswatching. “Dhilan hasn’t been lying, he’s been telling the truth.”
The diners. The plastic tables. The colouring crayons.
“Okay, why are you referring to yourself in the third person, Dylan?”
“Don’t try and change the subject, Prakash. Just because you and I got divorced, that doesn’t mean that you had to cut off contact with our son. I couldn’t stay married to you, but why to punish him?”
“What the hell?”
The milkshake. The thermos flask. The ketchup that came with the milkshake.
“He’s just a boy, Prakash.”
Dad probly thinks I’m fucked in the head. Truth is, I don’t know how else to stand up for myself. The Norman Bates routine just came to me – another little glitch of clarity. Only problem is my laughing keeps giving me away.
Dad starts pulling some rapid-fire small-talk action. Five minutes of the weather, five minutes about root vegetables, five minutes about sports. “And how are your studies going, son? How’s your little business doing?”
I tell him how I’ve finally decided on a name for my student start-up instead of just calling it Company A. “I’
ve decided to just use my name.”
“Your name?”
“Yes. D-Gital.”
“If you check your passport and birth certificate, you’ll find that your surname is Deckardas. Or are you just naming it after your mother’s family to carry on making a fool of me?”
“Come on, Daddy, don’t be like that. D-Gital is clearly a perfect name for a digital business. I wouldn’t exactly be communicating my core deliverable client capabilities if I called the company D-Deckardas.”
“Well, in view of this, I think I need to consider taking my investment off the table.”
“What are you talking about? It’s already off the table. Anyway, don’t get in a strop about this too – it’s just a name.”
“Names are important, Dylan. You can’t just pick and choose your name.”
I start listing random corporate names just to prove their randomness: Google, Yahoo!, Amazon – even Microsoft is pretty meaningless when you really stop to think about it. Truth is, I never really thought about the big-dealness of names until one time when I was googling stuff about Oedipus and I read how the dude got his own name wrong. He thought it meant “know foot” – and this spin that he put on his own name probly even gave him the confidence/self-belief to solve something called the Riddle of the Sphinx, which was this big deal brainteaser about feet.
Dad starts strangling the neck of his thermos flask. “Dylan, I hope you’re just joking about calling it D-Gital. Think about the message it will communicate to Naliah and her mother if you take my money and give your mother’s family all the kudos. They’ll think I’m a fool after the way you’ve treated me over the years.”
“Come on, Dad. This is getting long and boring. Now, look, I admit that when I was eight or nine maybe I cancelled a bunch of our Saturday lunches. But I was probly too scared to leave Mum or something.”
“Or more like you were too busy being brainwashed against me by your uncles and aunts.”
“What the hell is wrong with you, Dad?”
But, of course, I already know what’s wrong. I know that even though we clearly got some personal beef between us, that ain’t the reason why we’re getting dragged apart here. It’s cos of the Backfire Effect, Confirmation Bias, Motivated Reasoning and all them other mental fallibilities that have been supercharged by social media and search engines. A drop of my eye saliva splashes into my milkshake and I realise that if didn’t know all this Behavioural Economics stuff, I’d probly start losing my shit with him right here in Maccy D’s – and, of course, Dad would just take that as proof I was upset about him and Naliah’s mum. Instead, I try telling him how we’re just getting polarised by inbuilt mental processes that make us intolerant of people who view things differently.
“This isn’t about a different point of view, Dylan. From the way Naliah tells it, anyone would think that I’d just dumped you in a doorway or left you crying in a bundle on some windswept mountain. When, in fact, all I’ve ever been doing is trying to help you. I was – I wanted to try to help. After your mother fell ill. I could be giving you so much help and advice.”
“The hell kind of advice could you give? You got any nursing tips? Know how to insert things?”
“I could have told you many things, son. There are many things I could be telling you. For instance, not to search online for her symptoms – it could affect your health-insurance premiums. Even your chances of getting a mortgage.”
“What the hell?”
“Even the kind of people you have as friends on Facebook can affect your insurance premiums. The food you buy. Do you know how many insurance headaches are created by data and predictions and DNA and genetics? My own father, he kept things simple and just called these things destiny or fate.”
Clean my fone with an antibac wipe. Now a story about getting through it. An article about coping. An ad for a way out.
“So you see how I could be of help with the insurance, Dylan. And it’s all the more galling given that I’m the one who’s tried to re-establish our relationship by getting back in touch with you after all those years that you cut contact with me. So we need to get something straight, son: I didn’t abandon you or wash my hands of you. I was there for you – whenever you needed me. It was you who washed your hands of me.”
“Excuse me, sir,” comes a woman’s voice from behind me. “I’m very sorry, but you can only consume food and beverages bought on the premises at these tables.”
Yup – we’re saved from our latest father–son screen-freeze by the intervention of McDonald’s.
“I’m not drinking from this flask,” Dad goes to her, “I’m just standing it on this table so it doesn’t slip out of my coat.”
“Yes, but your flask creates the impression to other people that drinking their own drinks here is permitted.”
“Look, it was slipping out of my coat.”
After a little more back-and-forth, I grab the flask and tell them I’ll keep it out of view in my rucksack.
“There’s no need for that.” Dad table-dives to snatch it. Next thing, the two of us are kicking it slapstick, fighting over the flask like we’re battling to pay the restaurant bill. And in accordance with the generic slapstick conventions, the thermos flask goes flying. Slams against a wall, lid comes off; grey ash everywhere.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so, so sorry,” says the McDonald’s woman. “I didn’t realise it was an urn.”
“Dad, who is it?” I ask.
“What?”
“The ash. Whose ash is it? I mean, who died? Who gave it to you? And why the hell are they in a thermos flask and not a proper urn?”
“Of course,” Dad says. “You think I’ve killed someone, right? You’re now going to go and tell Naliah that I’m a murderer too?” My just-drunk milkshake bubbling in the corners of his mouth – like that time Mum and me seemed to puke out each other’s food. His whole body shuddering out of his raincoat now the same way his flask had done. Fighting to fling himself free from its sleeves.
“Dad, calm it, yeh. It’s okay. Everything’s gonna be okay.”
“No, I will not fucking calm it,” he shouts.
“Sir, I’m really so sorry about your urn,” says Ms McDonald’s. “I’ll go and get some wipes and a dustpan and brush – no need to use your coat like that.”
Dad doesn’t wait for her. Just drags his raincoat across the floor and starts stagger-styling towards the exit.
I block his path. “Wait, Dad. Wait up. Let’s just say for argument’s sake that you’re right. That everything you say is true – that I’ve somehow been brainwashed against you and that I been fucking up your shit outta spite.”
“That is the truth, Dylan.”
“Yeh, I’m saying let’s say it’s the truth. And, better still, let’s just say, just for argument’s sake, that I even got violent or something – punched you in the face or whatever.”
“Do you want to punch me in the face, Dylan?”
“No. But even if all those things were true … well, it still wouldn’t be a reason for you to cut off contact with me now, would it?”
King’s College. Later that afternoon.
“Dillon, this is a student chemistry lab not CSI,” says Anjali. Or Anna or Aekta. “I won’t be able tell you whose ash it is.”
All the same, I twist open the lid. She looks inside the flask and laughs. “Is this a joke? That’s not human ash.”
I tell her I know – that I just wanted to be sure.
Turns out it’s just paper.
Specifically, newspaper.
Even more specifically, newspaper that has been pasted to thicker paper, as if in some kind of scrapbook or cuttings book.
38
NINTH TIME YOUR mum told you she had the C-bomb, she told your ass via telepathy. Not cos the sickness had spread to her mouth or her throat or her tongue or her tooth-fillings, but cos the two of you couldn’t get even a minute to shoot the shit together. Even though you’d been texting each other like teenagers the pr
evious evening. Even though you’d been the first visitor to show up that morning. Problem was, you hadn’t counted on how many aunties and uncles were actually living with her by then.
And then friends, neighbours, strangers, random respect-payers – the doorbell like a boxing ring, the kettle jeering and hissing. You used to pray for house guests. Even pollsters or meter readers. Anything to bring about a tiny change in air density. All them years you hated the way your mum and you practically had to shower and shit and shave together, but now only thing you wanted was a one-to-one in a room with a door with a lock. Probly the nearest you got to being alone with her that morning was when she spotted some foto of you that had been boosted from its frame and then folded or scrunched or, whatever, deformed. She started massaging away all your crumples and creases. Scanning the living room to puzzle out who the culprit was. The living-room-cum-bedroom-cum-hospital-cum-hospice-cum-heaven’s-waiting-room.
In the middle of all the tea-drinking and praying and respect-paying and TV-watching, you jacked one of your various assorted uncles’ various assorted digital devices. Some fone or single-function camera or camcorder – fuck it, maybe even a top-of-the-range torch with video capture functionality. Over here, Mama, look this way. Come on, one last final close-up. Gaunt pale majestical bulimic-chic imprint of partial-rebreather oxygen mask. A forty-nine-year-old woman sculpted in a velvet-lined wind tunnel. The Macmillan nurse had helped her into that baggy peach dress, but by that stage, your mum was only allowing your masi to bathe her.
Over here, Mummy – look over here. At me – at the camera across the room. I’ve maxed out on zooming in. You figured that’s what all these toys were basically for. From old-school Polaroids and camcorders to all them places that’d print your fotos onto mouse-mats and cushion covers. Or chatbots that can mimic their emails and texts. Cos digital data doesn’t die, etc. Over here, Mummy – I’m sitting over here. Everyone overpaying compliments about her dress while you carried on like one of them front-row fuckwits who watches the gig through their fone. As she pretended to smile at someone who was pretending to laugh. As she flinched at the sight of some food smell. As she slipped the foto of you back in its frame. (You wondered if they’d found the fotos you’d slipped beneath your bed slats.) (Christmas fotos, mostly.) (Her with her cans of silly string and the semi-automatic party poppers.) (Wearing a surgical mask just for jokes while she carved the turkey.) Come on, Mama, don’t be shy. Look over here and smile for the camera. Can’t you see how hard I’m trying to smile behind it? Next, she started fixing up all the other framed pictures. The fuck did you keep hating all those fotos for? What’s wrong with having happy memories? And who the hell are all these people, Mum? All these friends and relatives and neighbours and relatives? How come they all know you so well? And how come they know this house so well? I don’t even know where you keep the sugar these days. The Macmillan nurse making like her personal bodyguard, though by that stage she was way past warning visitors about the risks of giving your mum an infection. The whole living-room set-up suddenly looking ridiculous. Surely if you enter life in a hospital, you should exit in a hospital? Or an ambulance. Something that says you kept trying. And again with the frigging foto frames – even though she tagged more shit on Instagram than you did. You hear that, Mum? Stop fucking around with the fotos and smile for the camera. Please.
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